Hardships make us if they don’t break us.

The first winter on the farm in Idaho in January of 1980 the water froze and froze hard. We got our water from a mountain spring that was just at the foot of the mountain about a quarter mile behind our house. The pipe that carried the water from the spring to the house was buried about 4ft deep. It had started to leak and the severe cold found its way down to the ,main water line and froze it. There was no chance for repair till late spring when the ground had unfrozen. The line would then have to be dug up and replaced. So our house just didn’t have any water. I’m telling you it was cold back then and record snow fall too.

The rancher that had a cattle feed lot next door said we could get water from the stock tank that the cows used. The water ran all the time and from the tap it was very clean. We would load up the tractor with grandpa’s old “Diamond T” flatbed trailer with all the old milk cans and 50 gal drums we had. We would fill all the milk cans from the tap that never stopped flowing that fresh mountain spring water. This was our drinking and cooking water. But it took too long to wait to fill everything that way. So we would break the ice and scoop up in 5 gal buckets of water from the trough for bathing, washing and flushing the toilet. We would then drive the tractor back to the house and unload as much as we could onto the back porch. Then every day we would chip through the ice to get the water we needed. We only flushed the toilet about once a day. The old adage “if its yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down” really meant something then. Baths were Saturday night in preparation for church on Sunday. The smallest would go first it seemed like, and would receive one large canning pot of hot water. The next child would go and a fresh pot would be added to the tub and so on. I remember looking down at the tub after mom had just added a fresh pot of hot water for me to the now half full tub, there was moss from the cattle trough floating in the dark gray water and I thought to myself “how can this dirty water get me clean?” but after a week of no bathing I really didn't even care. Truth be told it felt soooo good and I did feel better maybe even slightly cleaner after. Spring finally came and dad rented a trencher and a new line was installed to the house and water returned.

This taught us to be thankful for the things in our life that we normally take for granted. This was a hard time but we pulled together and made it through “none the worse for the wear.”

Remember Case family rule #1 Life’s hard but I’m tough!!