A spring Pap used for our gravity water when I was a girl
I cannot hear of mountain springs without memory taking me back to the role springs played in my life in my earlier years. Grandpa had what was probably a hand dug well with a bucket. If the water got low, we would scamper across the Pinnacle Creek to fetch a bucket of water from a mountain spring. I look back and wonder what made me so fortunate that I learned the value of spring water at such a young age. The spring was on a bank surrounded by Mountain Laurels, and the water ran off pooling into a rock and dirt formed a reservoir. The reservoir had probably been formed by centuries of run off from that mountainside. My grandmother kept her fresh milk there, and on the 4th of July it kept several watermelons cold for the huge army of kin folk that converged each year. Most all the men had served their country, and the 4th of July was celebrated in a big way. We could fetch the watermelons and carry them across a bridge that was a log with a flat side. There were other logs at different points on the winding Pinnacle Creek, and we learned to scale them easily even when they were rounded and still slick from the bark. With all the new technology of today, it is hard to fathom that each and every person who ever spent time on my Grandpa’s Pinnacle Creek Homestead loved and missed it forever. Today, the only sounds that may be heard from the Homestead are the noises made by the ATV’s that converge on the Hatfield and McCoy Trail each summer. There are others who can still look back and remember the mountain spring not far from a large rock where many stood to have their photo taken then and occasionally now.
—PinnacleCreek
I hope you enjoyed PinnacleCreek’s memories of the spring as much as I do. I’ve always been amazed by springs, especially the ones that surround my mountain holler.
I’ve never gotten over the miracle of water bubbling up from the mighty deep to supply water to those that need it as well as feed creeks and rivers as they flow on toward the sea.
Last night’s video: Unusual Words & Sayings from Appalachia.
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My Granny was a good Baptist and a complete teetotaler. Her husband, my Grandpa, was neither. When they would go down to Granny’s old homeplace in the country, they usually stayed two or three days. Liquor was in no way available, but Grandpa had a plan. He put his bottle of whiskey between two big rocks at the bottom of the spring, then another rock on top. Even though lots of family members visited the spring often and used the tin cup perched on a flat rock above the pool to get a drink, Grandpa knew his stash was safe. On one visit to the farm, of a hot summer day, Grandpa said he’d head on down to the spring for a little drink. He did just that and, as he lifted his bottle out of the water, woop! The glue that held the label on the whiskey bottle had dissolved and the bottle slid right out of Grandpa’s hand. The big rocks took care of the bottle. That must have been a very long visit.
Kim-great story 🙂 Thank you for sharing it!
I know about those springs. O the cool fresh water on a hot day. As a kid that’s all we had, no running water in the house or bathroom. That was one of my jobs going to the spring and Carring back a bucket of water. Aw. those were the days. We have the huge Spring that just pours off rocks in the Community. Every one goes there and gets jugs of fresh fresh water. I doubt if that spring would ever dry up.
I live in Connelly Springs. Not really, I just get my mail there. I lived in Connelly Springs a long long time ago. We lived there from 1977 to 1993 except for about six months when we lived in Valdese. The place I live now has no name that I know of. I have to turn on a street for a ways before I turn on my road. Only cities and towns have streets, don’t they? So, there must be an urban area here but I ain’t seen it.
Connelly Springs has other mineral springs but one is historical. It was once a spa. People came from all around to drink from and bath in its waters. The water was even bottled and shipped around the country. That was in the late 1800s. The railroad ended at Connelly Springs. There was a wye where the engines could turn around. When it was decided to build the railroad across Old Fort Mountain the track and a siding was laid right beside the spring. Between the spring and the hotel that went with it. The end of the track became a depot. The coalfired steam trains that once stopped and turned around still stopped but between the hotel with its guests and the spring they came for.
That was 100+ years ago. The spring is full of debris from the railroad now. The hotel has been replaced by a overflow warehouse for a nearby furniture dealer. There are homes remaining from that era but nothing of the Spa is still recognizable. They call it “progress” and maybe it is but toward what goal?
We had a spring at Antioch School when i was there in the late ’40’s to mid ’50’s when the one teacher schools were consolidated. My Mom was teacher. Every morning two 7th grade boys would take the water bucket on a stick..one boy at each end and fetch the water from the spring down in the hollow. In 1941 my Uncle Ed Mauney and his Uncle Homer Carroll walled the spring in and placed marble markers in honor of Col Benjamin Ledford who donate 10 acres for Antioch Church and Antioch School as well as Uncle Luther Mauney. He and Col Ledford were founders of Antioch Collegiate Institute, which was originally there. About 1884. Later it became Antioch Elementary School. A few years ago, some Boy Scouts from Antioch cleaned up the area and built a new trail to the spring. My mother was teacher in 1941 and her hand prints and the student’s of 1941(7 grades). She stopped teaching just before I was born in 1943 and then went back to Antioch 1947. She taught school for 42 years all total.
This is for Ed and Robert. I am being serious and not trying to be funny, both of your comments are way over my head concerning computers. Speaking a foreign language or the computer terms or whatever they are called are both the same to me. In my country boy language I have no idea of what you are talking about. During my 12 years of school I never even saw a computer much less learned anything about using one. The only requirement for my blue collar working career was a weak mind and a strong back, no computer knowledge needed. I now have a weak mind and a weak back 3 bad disc.
I am sorry I offended you. I was only trying to help. It will never happen again!
hi Tipper, I lived for a year in a little cabin next to the Koksilah River here. There were three sources of water, the river and two springs, one was across the river. It flowed down the hillside to a reservoir the original owner of the cabin had built in the 1930’s and it was lovely water. The other was behind the cabin in the hillside and it tasted heavily of limestone. Okay for bathing and washing clothes or dishes but terrible for drinking or cooking
Those memories are priceless. Hot and cold water is priceless, and I will forever be grateful for it. However, there will never be anything more enjoyable than the old Dinners on the ground, and a 4th of July celebrated with kin folk. I am so grateful to have experienced those early years. They taught me so much about being grateful and staying as close to nature as possible. Through all the trials and tribulations of life, those natural wonders of nature will keep and sustain us. I hope Granny can enjoy some green beans, as I know she loves them as my mom did.
I’m still fascinated with natural springs that bubble up fresh water from the earth. Some of the coolest and cleanest water you’ll ever find. I sympathize with the writer when mentioning only hearing the sound of ATVs now. The noise from ATVs and loud motorized vehicles has really ruined a lot of outdoor places that used to be enjoyable and peaceful.
We didn’t have a spring growing up, but we had the coldest, most delicious well water. We had a hand pump in our little rented house. I remember standing there pumping it for my dad when he got home from work while he washed his hands for supper. The water never had to be refrigerated. It was always cold. Mom had to heat water on our gas stove for everything from washing dishes to bathing. We had to be careful in the summer so it wouldn’t run dry. We always collected rain water for washing clothes. We would carry it In buckets to fill our wringer wash machine and moms big rinsing tub. I don’t know how my mama did it all with four kids underfoot.
I grew up in Raleigh which is right about on the fall line that separates the piedmont region from the coastal plains. There were lots of springs: Willow Springs, Fuquay Springs, Holly Springs (where my mother was born), Chalybeate Springs and Raleigh even had its own Mordecai Spring.
My Pa’s sister Amanda and her husband lived on a place in Rockingham County outside of Reidsville when I were a wee tad. I remember they had a spring below the house about 60 yards with a tank built around it where they kept dairy products and anything else that needed to be kept cold. I was less than 3 yo but I have a vivid memory of Aunt Amanda’s place including a nanny goat that would butt anything that moved and had to be tied up.
My Grandma Hutchins lived with Aunt Amanda’s family at the time. She was born April 7 before the Civil War started on April 12 in ’61. I well remember her sitting in the shade of a tree in a chair that one of my cousins was assigned to bring out and in for her, reading her Bible and watching all her grand-younguns at play.
Thanks for the memories, Tipper
Prayers continue for Miss Louzine.
God’s Blessings to all . . .
My aunt and uncle in the Arkansas Ozarks had a spring house in their back yard, and that’s where all their drinking water came from. When we would visit them as kids, we loved to go into the cool spring house and see the tiny salamanders who lived in the water.
What great memories of mountain spring water and how it was used. I grew up with indoor plumbing with city water, but thankfully at the time it was good City water. When we moved to NC the city we first lived in didn’t have good tasting drinking water. We had to filter it. Then we move out to be more closer to the country and our home has well water, which thankfully is delicious! Not far from our place I have been told, there is a spring where someone has put in a pipe from the spring so if anyone needs water can fill up their jugs. I’ve not been there myself, but I’ve heard this from people I know that has filled up their jugs from that spring location.
Tipper, a couple of things to go along with last night’s video of ugly, the baby was so ugly their mother had to be blindfolded before she would let her baby nurse, being so ugly they would sit the baby/child in a corner and shoot their food to them with a slingshot. Another one, the daddy took one look at the newborn and went straight down to the barn and shot his mule. A man that played in my father in laws band would tell a joke or two before having a devotion, one joke he would tell was about a women and her baby riding a train and the woman crying her eyes out because of her ugly baby, the train conductor was trying to comfort her and brought her a cup of coffee to drink. He told her he had even brought her monkey a banana. The dictionary has my picture beside of the word ugly and says a picture is worth a thousand words!
I remember granddaddy’s well when he would draw up a pail of water and we would use dippers that he made from dried out gourds. Those were the good ole days.
We had a great aunt who owned significant acreage not far where we lived. It had been the site of her family’s homestead and was acres and acres of woodland by the time I came along. There was a natural spring on the property and every year our family & other relatives would make an outing there to clear the spring. The men would dig and the women and children would clear brush. Thank you for the sweet memories!
I live in northern Michigan, and we have a lot of natural springs, and many people still rely on them, especially hikers and campers. I know of several lakes that are entirely spring-fed, and some are large lakes. They constantly remind me of how God has provided us with not only water, but the best water. Prayers for Granny and all of you.
The sound of rippling water is so relaxing. I enjoy the videos when Katie goes to the creek looking for rocks. On really hot days, I can just imagine how cool the water is. Praying that all of you are resting in the Lord during these difficult days. Take care and God bless ❣️
A spring is a wonderful thing. I think about how the Indians camped and built villages near springs. White settlers too. As a teenager, I hauled spring water up a long hill to my grandpa’s house near Salem when his well went dry one summer. That little spring saved the day. There was no other water source for miles.
We grew up drinking well and spring water. We carried water from the creek for washing clothes and to use in the galvanized tub where mom canned outside. The EPA conducted studies a few years ago after research linked the areas high cancer rate to drinking water sources. The battery acid used in coal mining seemed to be the focus of the study. Although I never heard the final results, I would never drink from the places I did when I was a child.
I have seen a few springs that were hand dug down into ground water. They are usually just at the bottom of the hillslope and intersect ground water on its way to a stream. I’ve wondered just what they “went by” to choose where to dig. Where I grew up, springs are often underneath the cliffs and if they haven’t picked up sulphur from a coal seam have really good water.
There are springs that trickle and those that gush millions of gallons of water daily. Here in Florida, spring water is sold to bottlers for next to nothing. I have scuba dived in several springs with limestone caves large enough to contain a small house. Silver Springs is one such. Wakulla Springs is another. Sad to say, some springs are getting polluted and also recording reduced flow. A few years back, that spring water was as clear as the air in our homes. Now, some are closed to swimming. It is a shame.
In Oconee County, SC on Hwy 107 near the Walhalla Fish Hatchery there is a spring on the side of the road named Moody Spring. I think the spring is actually higher up on the mountain but someone (maybe county) has piped water from this spring to the side of the road and has made a pull off there. Anytime I took my Daddy with me when I went fishing up that way, he would take milk jugs with him and fill them up with water from this spring. The town of Williamston, SC was built around a mineral spring and now has a park around the spring, people come and get mineral water from this spring.
There was a spring close to my granny’s house and I would walk with her to get water. Not far from where I live, there’s a place called Lovely’s bluff. There’s a pipeline coming out of the mountain with cold fresh water. Everyone takes barrels, jugs and anything else for “free” fill ups! Yes, I have done it also!
Prayers for the family!
When I was a kid my grandparents had a cistern with all the water from the roof being carried by the gutters to the filtration system which consisted of screen, rocks and sand. They had a hand pump on their back porch that was used to fill up water buckets that were carried into the house. My dad has said so many times how he didn’t understand why they didn’t catch typhoid fever from the system, but it must have filtered the water pretty well for the water to be safe to drink.
My uncle had a spring that was at the bottom of a hill which he ran a hose from into an old claw foot bathtub that he used to water his cattle and horses. That water tasted soooo good and was cold so it was great to drink on a hot summer day!
I love spring fed creeks and mountain streams. We vacationed years ago in my ancestral state of North Carolina and drove on the Blueridge Pkwy. Some of the side roads took us to old farms from the 19th century and several had spring houses. They were still functional and you could get inside and feel how cool the air was wafting up from the ice cold water.
Thanks for this story.
Thanks for all the videos you offer us, Tipper. They never get old or uninteresting. God Bless you guys, and give Granny my best. Praying for her.
praise God, he let us live another day! ❤️
Years ago, when living in Blue Ridge and volunteering to work on the train that goes from Blue Ridge to McCaysville, we would have people that were either vacationing in Dahlonega or nearby, call to inquire about riding the train and you would know they did not live there and would say, Dal lin ega…and we all smiled and know they were visitors. It is a cute town and visited there often. God Bless
Glenda, it’s the same with Kissimmee. Florida. If folks say KISS-im-me, we know they are Yankees. It’s pronounced
ki-SIM-ee. Nobody would know that unless told. Btw, Blue Ridge is one of our favorite mountain destinations.
In Eastern NC below Wilson on highway 64 there are 2 town back to back name Pinetops and Conetoe. Conetoe is pronounced kuh NEAT uh. I don’t know why the first isn’t puh NEAT ups, but it isn’t. 🙂
Texas has loads of towns that non-natives mess up. Mexia is muh HEE uh. Refugio is ruh FEAR ee oh. Just 2 of many examples I could cite.
This comment is for both you and Norman. I have never been to Dahlonega but have been close. When I would drive to Chattanooga, I would go through Gainesville and Dawsonville and get on Hwy 53 and drive over to Interstate 75. At other times I would through Elijay and and on up to I think Dalton before coming back out on the interstate. I was always amazed by the river alongside of Hwy52 ? When driving to Elijay, it seemed to be running backwards from the other rivers and creeks I was used to seeing. I would go this way to keep from going through Atlanta. It has been at least 30 years since I last been through there. I no longer have anyone to visit at Chattanooga although I would like to go back to their graves in the cemetery located at the bottom of the Incline Railroad.
Praise God in Jesus name, my friend! I am praying for you, your loved ones and of course Tipper’s saint of a mother!
Lovely memory. We didn’t have a spring, we had well water. When I moved to the city to work it took me a long time to get used to city water. It tasted awful.
Here where I live in Scaly Mountain, a spring was our source of water for many years. When my daddy passed & my momma moved here to live year round she put a well in. She knew the spring would freeze in the winter & the trip down to it was steep and treacherous in summer much less winter. My Papa had put a small pump about half way between the house and the spring so we could pump the water up the mountain to the house. That was the coldest best water. Today only one my neighbors still uses the spring as their water source. I will say though, our well water is just as wonderful as that spring water was. Always cold, and so good and refreshing to drink. I sometimes miss that walk down the side of the mountain to visit the spring. I actually tried to walk down there not long ago, but it was just too slick and steep. Kinda figured it wouldn’t be a good place to fall and break something so I turned back. However, it’s still there in my memories. My children loved to explore the spring too. Thank you Tipper for a sweet memory.
I was born in 1954 and by then most people in my area had wells and refrigerators. My maternal grandparents had their back porch built around a well but never had a bathroom or inside “running” water in their home. One older single neighborhood lady did carry her water from a spring until she was not able and finally had a well dug and piped the water to her kitchen before she died. I know of several people that enclosed their springs and put pumps in them instead of having a well. I only knew of one person having gravity water, he lived at Rocky Bottom, SC and had rigged up a barrel under a waterfall in a creek on Sassafras Mountain and piped it to his home. My friend told me about his grandmother having and using a spring and of having a spring house, now a Dollar General store is on her home place.
Ed, I did get 1 1/2 inches of rain yesterday. The trees and grass having been shouting and now it is safer for the male dogs to again run around outside. Less chance of a tree mugging them.
Randy, or anybody, do you know how a ram works to lift water from a stream to a higher elevation? I’ve never quite understood how such a thing works. A friend in Mountain Rest had a ram pump, but it wasn’t in use when I was there last.
Gene, I have saw the rams working but I don’t know how they work. I think they may work because of something called water hydraulics. When you lived in Walhalla, did you ever go to Oconee State Park and see the large ram they had in the creek below the bathhouse and swimming area? I think in the early years of the park this ram supplied or pumped the park’s water for the bathrooms and camp sites. Ed may know how the rams work.
Gene, can you shed any more information on Moody Springs I mentioned in another comment?
1½”! That’ll help for sure! One little secret I’ll let you in on. If you are typing on a keyboard with a 10 key and want to make the half symbol, make sure the number lock is on and hold down the alt key while you type the numbers 0189. You can make a ¼ symbol the same way only you type the numbers 0188. 1 1/2
You can also make paragraphs by pushing the enter button twice. It’s not a true paragraph like we learned to make in school but it’s better than having your writing all in one big block. The only reason I’m telling you this is that I like to read what you write but have difficulty following the lines when you don’t have any separation of your paragraphs. It’s my eyes and my age that are the problem not anything you have done!
This isn’t utter selfishness on my part. There are other older folks who read this blog who might benefit from it and other guest writers who might want to make their presentations more readable.
Just in case you don’t know what a “ten key” is, it’s the block of numbers on the right side of your keyboard that functions as a calculator
1 1/2, I meant to say, always looks like eleven divided by two to me. 11/2 or 1 1/2. Maybe it’s my eyes or my little brain that flawed but I see the same thing. 111/2 or 11 1/2 is worse. That’s the very reason I went looking for the ½ symbol.
Hey Ed, all of that technical stuff is above me, I consider it a compliment to be called dumb. Most people that really know me say I would have to get smarter before I could be considered dumb.
That rain was a blessing except for a quarter of an inch, it’s the only real rain we have had in 2 months. The thing so good about it is because of it being a slower, gentle rain , every drop of it soaked into the ground. Read my earlier comment about the trees and grass shouting, it kinda sounded like a Pentecostal church when I went outside. I don’t mean to offend anyone but I can’t go long without joking. This statement was wrote by a back row sitting, dried up southern Baptist. Sometimes I think the only time we get excited is when someone mentions eating or fried chicken.
Ed, Randy and all . . .
There is a utility built into Windows called Character Map. It gives you access to all kinds of different symbols like ½, ®,° and many others AND to special characters that only appear in specific type fonts. You can access Character Map in many way (I have it pinned in my taskbar for easy 1-click access because I use it a lot). Perhaps the easiest way for most folks is to click the Window symbol at the lower left of your screen to open the list of programs on your system then scroll down to Windows Accessories and click the down indicator to the right. Select Character Map and Bob’s your uncle. You can scroll through and find whatever you need that will display or print in that particular font’s character set and you can see all the characters in other fonts.
As for paragraphs, I agree with you Cousin Ed. For a long while I thought there was something in the software that Tipper uses for BP&A that didn’t recognize paragraph breaks. I was wrong, sorta. It does not recognize them until a post has been approved by a moderator; therefore when you post something and look at it you don’t see the paragraph breaks, but after Tipper or Corrie or whoever does the moderating, WordPress software shows the breaks.
Hope this helps somebody.
Your well and that spring probably come from the same aquifer and are exactly the same physically and chemically. I’d be very surprised if that is not the case.