My husband's widowed mother married her former brother-in-law in our living room. Uncle Charlie had hurt his leg putting down our well on the property of what was to be our new home, closer to my husband's work. The minister said it wasn't written anywhere that you had to stand to be married. We were all seated.

Back to the well. The water table was high at the new place. We didn't need to drill a well, Uncle Charlie said. He would help us pound down a well. It was cheaper to do than drilling a well. The three of us could do it.

We had never seen a well point before. It was about a three foot length of pipe threaded at one end, perforated like a screen during most of its length and ending in a point. It would be a permanent part of the well. Several lengths of threaded pipe would be needed to assemble the pipe up from the well point. We carried everything to the back yard of our new home.

Ready to begin, we needed to determine the best spot for the well. My husband marked a spot about twenty feet behind the house in line with the water pump pit under the house. We were beyond the required fifty feet distance from the septic tank, but we didn't know of that requirement. We also didn't know we needed a permit as well as an approved location for the well. Ignorance was bliss. We got away with it.

First, we needed to make a tripod to place over the desired spot for the well. A pulley system was needed to raise and lower the pounder. Uncle Charlie supplied the pounder, a heavy square hunk of iron mounted on a metal rod with a steel eyelet atop the heavy end. We would be pounding on a coupling attached to the section of pipe we were driving down. It would protect the threads. The coupling we pounded on had to be placed on each new section of pipe as we worked the pipe into the ground. A new piece of pipe would be threaded on a coupling as we continued. The process wasn't complicated; it was just new to us.

My husband dug out a few shovels full of soil and they set up the tripod. Uncle Charlie assembled the pounding thingy and gave a demonstration. They took turns pounding and soon reached what they call “hard pan.” Uncle Charlie explained that the layer of water above it was surface water and not fit to drink. The water we wanted was on the other side of the hard layer.

We found water at thirty-two feet. We would have gone further but the rope on the pulley broke and the tripod toppled over onto Uncle Charlie, badly bruising his leg. During dry spells, only a trickle of water flowed. It took forever to fill the bathtub. In wet weather, there was plenty of water. We wore out several shallow well pumps over the years. Eventually, a well driller put down a deeper well. There were no more problems with volume or water pressure.

We never pounded down another well. Uncle Charlie's bruised leg eventually healed. My mother-in-law and Uncle Charlie were married for several years until she passed away from a stroke.