When the skill was learned, the bucket cleared the well top and was pulled to rest on the top planks in one continuous motion that scarcely made any weight for the left hand. Once the bucket was hauled and set on the welltop, two hands were used to handle the bucket and transfer the water to the kitchen pail. Here the mechanical advantage of the pulley was gone and the weight of the water pulled at the arms and backs of the women who could not center the weight over their feet until they had pulled the bucket clear of the welltop. This well-wheel turned the days and years on Riverdale farm as surely as the mantel clock. More surely many days because the water was drawn dawn and dusk, noon and night, in a necessity older than the clock.
Chronic time is always approximate, distant to the chthonic time of farms.
The farm and the land were measured out in water, in a hundred thousand turnings of this wheel telling the time of day, of the land, of life itself as the water was drawn to bathe the newborn and the dead. Jimmy Gray gave me the well wheel. It lay rusted and crumbling in one of the sheds. City water long since came down the road following the power line. The old holdings have slipped away.