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Show For the site Father chose the top of the highest rise of land in our neighborhood. It was on what had been Grandfather Culmsee's homestead, just south of the main tamarix windbreak. We swiftly sank the well through 22 feet of varied sand and clays, then through that first water-bearing layer. Below that, we struck a stratum of clay almost dense enough to be termed hardpan. It wasn't stone but it seemed like fine-grained natural cement which ground up into a slick thin paste in the water from the first water-layer. How many days it held out against us I can't remember. We turned and turned the bar; we piled on more weight; we pushed our chests against the bar and strained harder; w e whittled away at that slick yellow barrier. Round and round we plodded pushing, puffing against added iron weights. Daily we studied the yellow result of our boring. But meager coring it was, mere grinding, more a process of grinding us down than of boring into that stubbornness down in the depths. Finally--these epochal changes are rarely signalized unmistakably- we saw a change. The bit grated upon a streak of fine gravel. It jumped at a larger pebble. And then we cracked the crust, we broke through. One day the yellow clay was less uniform. It showed a handful of black particles. We welcomed the new harshness, the bumpiness, not simply because any change was heartening but because we felt something we-the bit-could bite into. We had made it. One day we sank the point into genuine coarse gravel. But we couldn't be sure about the water until we drove deeper, forced down our casing, and pumped. Then we knew: pure deep-formation water below possible surface seepage and minerals from |