Appalachian remote control and jumper cables

I was sharing some memories about my grandpa Patton with you the other day. And as I was sitting by the heating stove at the cabin this morning watching the sun come with a cup of coffee and my thoughts about the past, I decided to share a few more. The house I remember was a four-room house with a porch across the front and down one side, the porch step was a large rock, and the well was on the side porch. You had to lower the this tube about three or four feet long and it was about four inches in diameter and when it was done to the water you pulled a cord that opened a trap door and the water would enter the tube, you released the cord and the lid closed you then pulled up the tube by the chain and pulley. You then swung the tube over your bucket pulled the cord and the water was released. If you where doing laundry or dishes you the put the water on the stove to heat it. Drinking water was in a bucket on the counter and a schoolhouse dipper was in it you simply got a drink and put the dipper back in the bucket for the next person. Tari cannot comprehend that everyone drank from the same container, as she is a city person. Anyway the house set in a little bottom in a narrow holler the garden was out in front of the house, as wells a couple of coon hounds tied to fifty five gallon drum dog house’s, and the tobacco field behind the house a small creek with a plank foot bridge ran down one side for about seventy five or eighty yards and then joined by a small creek that ran from the hillside and the outhouse sat on this creek. The inside of the house was very simple all the rooms had linoleum floors the kitchen had a table and chair that sat next to a window and the chest freezer sat at the end of the table next to the wall, and of course a refrigerator, stove and a Hoosier type cabinet and the ringer washer sat in a corner. In the center of the house was a coal burning pot belly stove, I can still hear the shaking of the grate in my mind still today just as if I had done it this morning and is has been thirty years.
Two bedrooms one small with a bed and the wardrobe, one large with to big beds. Each bed had a feather mattress and on big feather pillow that went across the bed and each with homemade quilts on them, and under the one big bed by the door that led out onto the front porch had a chamber pot under it. The living room had to couches a TV and a gun rack. The TV got two channels and the antenna sat up on the mountain, which brings me the story. Grandpa Uncle Bob and I wanted to watch the UK Basketball game but the signal was not very good so we had to adjust the antenna. With my grandpa on the couch locking at the TV my aunt Evelyn on the porch me about half up the mountain and Uncle Bob at the antenna. He moved it one-way and hollered at me how; that I then hollered how’s that to Evelyn she asked grandpa how’s that. He would a little more then Evelyn hollered a little more to me and then I hollered a little more to Bob. And this continued till the picture came in better, and this all was done in the dark of night, and there you have Appalachian remote control.
My grandpa had a couple of heart attachs before he passed away, on the first one he had I to laugh as the ambulance drivers told my uncle Bob and mom that the whole time they were taking him to hospital and working all he kept asking was he much he owed them for the ride. When he was in the hospital in intensive care mom and I was allowed to go in and visit for a few minutes. And in the room was this mountain of a man in this bed with all of these wire hooked to him they had to shave parts of his chest to attach them. And at some time during our visit he looked over at me with sorrow in eyes and said “ Branson what ever you do don’t let them hook those jumper cables to you”. I will never forget that day.