Country Gal by Vanita Blundell 6-06-06

Country Gal by Vanita Blundell 6-06-06
Most people have memories of their grandparents’ home. At my grandma and granddads home they had a garden water tank. The windmill pumped water into a 55 gallon barrel then into a horse tank. This was called the garden tank as they could connect a garden hose to and water would trickle out for grandmas’ garden. From the top of garden tank there was a pipe that ran about 2 foot above the ground it went into the stock tank. In the garden tank grandma had a couple of goldfish. They are the only thing that I have been able to maintain. And do I have goldfish! They are not the original fish but I think that I got some fish from Shala Unruh. If I remember correctly she had got them from her Dads horse tanks. He apparently had an over abundance of fish and they needed to thin out a few. I still have the garden tank, but no garden, and the other stock tank is still connected to the garden tank. The goldfish were in the garden tank and now the smaller fish have gone thru the pipe and into the stock tank below. Now I must thin out some fish I have several other tank that I can put them in. I just need the ‘want to’ to do it.
One summer Robert Beatty was spending quite a bit of time out at the grandparents’ farm. He is the son on Mildred Klingensmith Beatty, his grandmother was Bessie Klingensmith. He was about two years older than I was. It was terribly hot out and he decided that we needed to hop in the garden tank to cool off. Grandma said that we had to clean it out first. It took us the better part of the day but we got the worst of it. Then we jumped in the nice cold water. We thought we were pretty clever. After thinking on this for a while - We must not have cleaned the tank too good, as we had tadpoles swimming around us along with the goldfish. That was the first and last time I ever played in a tank.
When the kids were small I thought that I would be a good mother a get a little wading pool for them. I bought the water toys and told the kids how much fun they were going to have splashing around. I got the pool filled the pool with water in the morning so it would warm up by the afternoon. The kids were excited about playing in the water. They jumped in and then ‘they’ came. The wasps, yellow jackets, dragonflies and mosquitoes came in droves. They were swarming around the kids, dipping the water and just being a nuisance. Jeff hating anything with wings, this was not a good thing. They started to yell and cry and then it was over. So at our house a wading pool was not the thing to do. I see several people with the above ground pools and once in awhile you will see a horse tank in someone’s back yard. I sure hope that they have better luck than we did.
I might say that the tanks that I am talking about are metal tanks, not a hole in the ground. When I lived in Texas I heard people talk about those who had drowned in stock tank. I found this odd. Even though I have heard of children who had fallen in horse tanks and drown, but never grown adults. They were telling about a man who had met his demise in a stock tank, being curious I asked how tall he was, when I was told that the man was average height, I was confused. Then I asked if there was a reason why he could not just stand up. After a strange awkward silence I was told that a stock tank in Texas is what we call a pond. Sometimes I would look a lot more intelligent if I just kept my mouth shut.