The man could not help but notice how a recent storm had caused a large tree to fall at a place not far from where he lived. It saddened the man to note that the falling tree had crushed a small but very neat spring house.
The man had passed that spring house probably a thousand or more times during his life. The damaged spring house had always been kept neatly maintained by its owners, though no one had resided at the property for several decades. The tidy spring house with its frame window and shiny tin roof always spoke peacefully to the man of a past long gone but fondly remembered.
The damage done by the falling tree reminded the man that nothing on earth remains forever. It caused the man to travel in his mind to another spring house with which he was acquainted in his childhood. Though neglected, that spring house outlasted its original owners for many years.
That old spring house sat in a secluded corner of a field behind an old farmhouse that the boy’s parents rented. The spring’s water flowed, as it had for eons, from deep within the earth. It emptied into the creek that divided the cleared, flat field behind the homestead from the steep woodland.
Due to many years of abandonment, the damp, decaying little building showed little of its original splendor. When first built, the spring house must have been a wonder to see. The sturdy barnwood that framed it had once been freshly sawmilled. Its shingle roof was leak proof. Now, the entire structure was weathered and rotten. What remained of its roof was moss covered, and lots of mud and many years of falling leaves decayed in the spring bed. The ancient spring house whispered ghostly echoes of earlier times before electricity and refrigeration were available in that rural area. The boy’s imagination traveled back.
He imagined the first time a white settler discovered the spring. It was possibly hundreds of years after the first wild animals and Indians (now termed Native Americans per political correctness) had there sipped cool water flowing from deep within the earth. Eventually, almost surely due to the spring and creek, a man and his wife purchased the land and built their two-story frame farm house a few hundred yards from this source of clean water.
The boy often visited the dilapidated spring house and thought upon the prominent family that once lived where his family now resided. Inside there once were strong shelves, full of jars of good things to eat kept pleasantly cool inside its shaded interior.
Surely cattle had grazed in the meadow between the house and creek. The boy imagined that in the bottom of the spring were chilling crocks of fresh cream, milk, buttermilk, and butter from those cows. He marveled how brown and black cattle could eat green grass and make white milk.
At the junction where the trickle from the spring met the waters of the creek, an ancient oak tree had grown. This massive tree shaded the spring house from the setting sun, while the woodland behind blocked the rising sun, so that the spring house was constantly in the shade.
With the passing of time sons were born to the husband and wife. The boy thought about how the siblings and the oak tree had grown together. He imagined how they might have played under its shade as their mother did her chores around the spring house. The boy knew one of those sons as his family’s landlord, owner of the property the boy’s family rented. The owner told the boy about how the place had originally been a farm that encompassed many acres, possibly a hundred or more. The owner told the boy how he had cleaned the bed of the spring, how he toiled in his youth, wearing nothing but his shorts as he sweated behind the plow during the hot summers. He told about how his mother had made use of the spring house, how she had stored her milk and churned butter within the structure. The mother must have found the place pleasant, for in spring several once tame, now wild, pink rose bushes bloomed, as if calling out to the now departed lady, “Where did you go? We come every spring and summer to see you. We’re still here, blooming for you, waiting for you.”
In the owner’s younger years, water had to be carried in buckets from the spring house to the farmhouse kitchen. Eventually electricity became available to the area. As the family became more prosperous and the parents aged, a small cinderblock building on a concrete foundation was built next to the spring. A system of pipes was installed so that water could be pumped from the spring directly to the kitchen sink.
The pump house had a tin roof, whereas the spring house had always had a wooden shingle roof, as did the farm house originally. Perhaps, the boy mused, the farmhouse, woodshed and pump house all received their shiny tin roofs at the same time.
But not the spring house. No one saw a need to put a new tin roof on the old spring house. The spring house was now obsolete. Electricity made it possible to bring water from the spring directly to the farm house; also, it was possible to install a refrigerator that eliminated the need for the spring house to keep food from spoiling.
But even with its tin roof, the pump house lost its purpose within a few decades. By the time the boy’s parents rented the house, “city water” had been installed. The pump was gone, and all that remained in the pump house was a rusty fuse box and a couple of pipes that stuck up from the floor. Some pipes stuck up from the creek bed, bent and distorted, as if searching for the water that no longer pumped through their hollow insides.
No longer serving the life-sustaining purpose of supplying water, both the spring house and the pump house were neglected, left to decay with the passage of time. Recently the boy, now an almost retirement aged man, returned to see what was left of that old spring and pump house.
The spring still flows from deep within the earth. Every vestige of the old spring house is gone. Neither a block nor portion of the concrete pad of the pump house was to be found. The oak tree had fallen long ago, and part of it was slowly and gracefully decaying in the creek bed. Even the farmhouse was gone, having burned to the ground in a fire decades earlier, claiming four precious lives in its demise. The woodshed and all trees in the yard were gone as well.
As the man pondered these things, a lump formed in his throat. His eyes misted as he reflected on his childhood that could not be reclaimed. A gentle fear of the inevitable tickled his mind as he thought of all those now departed who had called this place home, who there had loved, played, worked, dreamed, died.
Most frightening of all was the thought that the once boy, now man, will, just as had the spring house and pump house, become obsolete, neglected, forgotten, left to decay with the passage of time.
Finally, the boy came to realize that the spring house, pump house, farm house, woodshed, oak tree and he himself were at one time useful, productive, and had opportunity to sustain a better life for others.
A good question, Dear Readers, for us to ask is, “How have I left the world better than I found it?”
Remember, Washington was great and remembered. Lincoln was great and is remembered. FDR was great and is remembered. But our remembrance is not doing them any good.
Rather, it is what they did to leave the world a better place than they found it that makes our lives better.
They each played their part to form a link in the chain of time. Have we done ours?

ANSWER TO QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 84
Why are actors told to “break a leg” before going onstage? (ANSWER: Every play needs a cast.)

QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 85
Why should a photographer always use a wide lens when taking pictures of horses? (See the next “Mincey’s Musings” in historicunioncounty.com for the answer.)