When I was a kid my parents had rented a small allotment garden where they grew different sorts of vegetables, had some bushes with berries and even an huge old cherry tree, which had been planted by my grandfather, my mother’s father. The garden was in the outskirts of the village where I grew up, we needed to drive there by bike, only occasionally my father took us there in our family car.
The cherry tree casted it’s shadow to a small lawn and a little garden cabin my father had built. Playing between the crop plants was not allowed for my brother and me, so we either spent time in the small lawn or we were discovering the agricultural area around. Sometimes we kids did excursions to a small river with our friends, every time experiencing another adventure.
But my favorite place was sitting in the cherry tree, which I was able to climb by using a rope ladder my father had fixed for us kids at one of the lowest branches. Later I even learned to climb the tree without any help. When I had reached the first bifurcation, I took the rope ladder up and placed myself on the thick arm, leaning my back to the trunk. Usually I had even taken one of my books with me, in summer the sweet light red cherries were directly in reach of my arms and I was happy. From this place I was able to observe my little brother getting more and more angry on the ground, because he could not climb, and I was no longer available to play with him. I remember I spend hours of my childhood sitting there, reading, munching cherries, currants, raspberries or cookies or simply enjoying the view to the distance from my crow’s nest hidden behind green leaves. Still today I sometimes catch myself in checking trees for the best way to climb.
The only disadvantage of my parent’s small paradise was the unavailability of electricity and drinking water supply. For spending a weekend day in the garden my parents usually carried big bottles of water and lemonade, which upon arrival were carefully stowed away in a hole below the floor of the cabin to keep them cool. I always admired my father’s foresight to plan this “fridge” when he built the cabin. For themselves my parents usually carried a dewar with hot coffee, but there was even a small gas oven where my mother could heat up snacks and make warm drinks.
Preparing and carrying all this equipment, including cake, cookies, food and also kid’s games and my books for spending a weekend in the garden it was always a kind of adventure for itself. When the weather was nice during summer there were even a small tent and sleeping bags in the cabin, so sometimes my father stayed with us kids for the whole night.
Getting water for watering the plants was another challenge: my father had two or three big casks behind the cabin, where he used to collect all the rainwater from the cabin’s roof. It was not for good drinking but suitable enough to water all the vegetables, during hot summer especially the strawberries required watering every evening. But after longer periods without rain even the three casks were not enough to feed the plants. This was the time when another adventure started for us kids.
When my father noticed the water running low, he used to call us kids to listen to him. There were not only me and my brother but quite a few other kids from the neighboring allotments, sometimes also some of my numerous cousins who lived close by. He ordered us to carry water from the house of my grandparents, who lived approximately a kilometer from that place.
Upon his advice a group of 4 to 6, sometimes even more kids started a walk to my grandparent’s place. In the beginning one of my parents came along with us kids, later the group was usually led by one of my older cousins or by me, having the responsibility to take care for the smaller kids in the group. The group consisted mainly of boys in the age between 6 and 14, brother, cousins, neighbors and friends, sometimes there were even more kids joining the group along the way. It seems to be a magical way of communication how potential adventures are spread within a community of kids.
When we arrived at my grandparent’s place the first challenge was to open the entrance door of the yard without having a key. There was a trick which was passed from one cousin to the next, but it needed some dexterity and could only be done by the older boys. Also opening the door of the shed required some body height or the skillful usage of a stick. Luckily in these days doors in smaller rural villages were never completely locked. In the shed it stood: the old red rattly hand cart with two big dented tin cans.
We maneuvered the cart outside in the yard, close to the window of my grandparent’s laundry, located in an adjacent small warped building separate from the living house. Inside the laundry was a long hosepipe which needed to be put through the small window with blind panes and poked inside the top opening of the first can. The person inside the laundry, whose duty was to open the water-tap could not see, if the hose was already inside the can, so it often happened the tap was opened too early and all boys in the yard got their first shower, which should not remain the last for the day. Filling the cans with the “help” of so many boys was always a big fun. It usually happened the water pressure let the hose slip out of the top opening or someone took the hose and started spraying some others with the effect of a loud screaming and hooting.
Finally, when the cans were filled, the next challenge started: pulling and pushing the cart to the allotment without losing too much of the water or even worse crashing the heavy cart somewhere. The content of the cans was approximately 50 liters each, so the water alone had a weight of 100 kilograms, plus the weight of the tin cans and the wooden cart. It required muscle power of many kids to get the vehicle moving. The way back led first along a plastered street, the easy part. Two boys steering by pulling the drawbar in the front, two or three pushing from the back the rattling ensemble slowly started moving, accompanied by the clanging sound of the shaking cans and loud cheering, shouting and sometimes cursing of the boys.
Hearing this everybody in the quarter immediately knew my parent’s water casks had been running low. Still today I wonder why the old wooden cart never broke under the rampant force of us boys. It happened the impetus and the pushing from the back steered the cart in an unintended direction. As the vehicle didn’t have any brakes one of the older boys needed to violently push the vehicle sideways to prevent it from crashing against a fence or a parking car. Also, the cans did not have a cap, there was always water swashing out, drenching all the helpers, but at least the load got a little lighter.
After half of the distance to my parent’s garden we needed to leave the plastered street to a narrow path, the soil cover changed to gravel and later became a country lane without any solid surface, just soil overgrown by grass. The challenge now was to keep the cart on the narrow path and to avoid it to crash into one of the furrows on the sides. If this had happened, and it happened minimum once per trip, everyone was needed to pull the cart, even by trying to lift the wheels from the holes they were stuck in.
Our arrival was already announced by our loud cheering, sometimes my parents helped us to manage the last most complicated 100 meters narrow path, not much wider than the span of the vehicle’s wheels. After final arrival the water needed to be transferred from the cans to the casks. As they were much too heavy to be lifted and there was no water pump available, my father took a short hose, sucked it completely full with water and was able to create a flow from the vessels to the casks.
All this took minimum 1,5 hours, sometimes even more water was required, so the whole group was sent a second time to repeat the procedure. But even without demand of more water at least the empty equipment needed to be brought back to my grandparent’s house. So, the neighbors in the small street were startled a second time, now by the even louder chattering and rattling of the lighter cart and clinging of the empty cans. The way back without load was also a welcome opportunity for us boys to test the vehicle’s suitability for human transport, sometimes it was misused even as a racing car.
Except some squeezed fingers and completely drenched clothes we never had a serious accident and the wooden handcart somehow survived the many years my family aestivated at the allotment. For us kids it was always a huge fun to spend half the day with a simple water transporting activity
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