When the REA ran electric to my one grandfathers farm, 1932, they put the pole right across one of his fields. Not where he wanted them. So he and my father moved them to where he wanted them. A few days later they came out to run the lines and the lineman noted the extra distance and said it would waste too much wire. After a few minutes my grandfather asked him if he like oysters. Yes was the reply. So for a bushel of oysters the poles were left where they were and the line was left where he wanted it. My father had to go tong the oyster up when he got home form school. We had several oyster beds in our creek. About a year later the REA had to put one more pole in the line because the pole-sitters had set the poles too far apart they said.

I remember seeing a old Delco system on his farm. I think it was a 32 volt system. Most were, but they also came in 65 volt and 110. All our family had were the 32's I think. Few farmers complained that when the new power lines were run they had just bought a new system or that they did not want to rewire their house to get hooked up to the REA. They all did by the war. Lot easier to flip a switch than anything else.

When I was a kid, a deep well was anything over eight or ten feet. If you got good flow at ten feet, and the water was not too bad for iron(rust) or sulfa you left it there. If it was not good water you would move it maybe ten feet away and try again. We put one ten foot well in the bottom of a dry ditch for hogs one year. Ditch was about ten feet deep and dry as a bone. Used a hit and miss engine to pump water out of it. We put in a "deep" well on the farm in 1968 and it was 75 feet deep. Last irrigation well I had put in was 1200 plus feet but a bit larger than the 4" well with a 2" supply line on that 75 foot one. Cost a bit more as well.

Most of the good old days was hard work. Things I did as a kid, working on the farm, would make a safety expert throw up. I could never let my kids do it. Starting tractors with a hand crank or by turning a pulley, or by chain pulling one tractor to start another, no fenders, roll bars, safety covers on pulleys, belts and electric. Driving tractors when I was six or seven years old, all day long. Heck I am older than the triangle safety signs seen on the backs of tractors these days. Carrying a loaded shotgun or .22 on a tractor or combine while working.