The Water Tower

The water tower still standing in Elton, Louisiana

If you grew up in a small town, the title of this post will jog your memory. We had a water tower in our small town (population 2,500). It has since been taken down. In 1993 a country singer by the name of Joe Diffie sang a song about the water tower in his town. The song was a catchy one. One that you'd sing at the top of your lungs as you rode in your truck with your windows rolled down on a dirt road.

1993 seems like such a long time ago.  Perhaps I was living in a bubble, but it seemed like people were happier back then.  Sure, there was division, but at the end of the day, we loved our Lord, we loved our country and we loved each other.  Think Mayberry.  Yes, it was just a TV show, but for the most part, the community values and spirit and neighborliness was real, at least where I lived.  

So let's talk about the water tower in a small town.  Here's how Joe Diffie's "John Deere Green" started: 

They were farm kids way down in Dixie

Met in high school in the '60s

Everyone knew it was love from the start

One July, in the midnight hour

He climbed upon the water tower

Stood on the rail and painted a ten-foot heart

The water tower in Kinder, Louisiana was silver in color and some home-town "artists" had climbed way up to the top and painted things.  They didn't paint a 10 foot heart.  If memory serves me right, the painting was, "SRS '76".  Translation: Seniors of 1976.  Some proud individuals that had or were going to graduate from Kinder High School, braved the climb with a can of black spray paint and advertised their school spirit for all the world to see.

Brave souls, indeed.  The water tower is way up there.  You had to have stamina to climb that ladder.  You had to not be afraid of heights.  Though I've done my share of other questionable things, I never climbed the water tower.  I'm telling on him, and he probably won't appreciate me saying this, but my Dad climbed the water tower when he was a young buck.

I'll have to get him to tell me the story again since it's been a long time since I heard it, but I seem to recall him telling me that he was scared to death.  Not to mention the fact that when he and his friends got to the top and looked down, there were flashing lights coming from the police cars of Kinder who had been tipped off about their nightly maneuvers.  To Protect and Serve.  The officers were interested in having the climbers come back down and have a visit.  There was no place to run and no place to hide!  

Here is the chorus to the song about the water tower in a small town: 

In John Deere green

On a hot summer night

He wrote, "Billy Bob loves Charlene"

In letters three-foot high

And the whole town said that he should've used red

But it looked good to Charlene

In John Deere green

See what I mean?  That's a song you can really sing out loud!  The young "Rembrandt" from a rural town wanted to convey his love to Charlene.  Yes, he should've used red to accentuate the romantic feelings, but all he had was a can of John Deere Green paint that would ordinarily be used to touch up the old John Deere 4020.

In addition to serving as a blank canvas on which to paint your pride in your academic prowess or your love for the "Charlene" in your life, the water tower actually served a purpose.  Water towers ensure pressured water to the community and rely on hydrostatic pressure to distribute water to the town.  They must be high in the air to accomplish this.  Each foot of height will provide 0.43 PSI (pounds per square inch) of pressure.  

This saves the municipality on pumping.  Once the water was up in the tank, you had pressure, even during power outages.  Even if the power was out, you could shower in the morning - at least while there was water in the tank. You would need a pump to pump water back up there once the reservoir was depleted.

Water towers often have the town's name painted on the side and/or the town's slogan and perhaps boasts of football championships painted up there as well.  Not to mention a place for the "Billy Bob's" of the community to declare their undying love for "Charlene."  It doesn't even need to be painted in red.  Charlene liked it in John Deere green.  God bless small towns in America!

As the song continues, you see that Billy Bob's painting on the water tower paid dividends:

They settled down on 80 acres

Raising sweet corn, kids, and tomatoes

They went together like a hand and a glove

On a clear day from their front yard

If you look and know what to look for

Up to the east, you can still read his words of love

In John Deere green
On a hot summer night
He wrote, "Billy Bob loves Charlene"
In letters three-foot high
And the whole town said, "The boy should've used red"
But it looked good to Charlene
In John Deere green.

The View From the Fender of a 4020

I've always been of average height - not too short, but definitely not tall.  When in crowds or at parades I always have to stand on tip-toes to see anything.  I do remember, when just a kid, when my perspective was a little different.  I had the perfect vantage point to see the whole world from a bird's eye view.  It happened to be when sitting on the fender of a John Deere 4020 tractor.

The old 4020 was a workhorse on the farm.  It was old, but dependable.  The paint was a little faded, but it didn't matter.  I remember the yellow seat on it was comfortable and it had lots of spring in it with armrests and a back support.  It had screens on either side that were held in place with springs.  The screens would fill up with Vaseygrass seeds, so you'd have to run your fingers down the screen to remove the seeds to allow air flow.  It was easy to work on, unlike the new computer driven tractors with circuitry and fuses.  Although I remember driving it, I mostly remember sitting on the fender riding on farm roads.

Although this is not our 4020, I found this photo on the Internet of one that looked kinda like it

When riding on the 4020 with my Dad, I sat on the fender.  My legs would dangle off the front and my rubber boots would hit against the rubber grips on the tire that passed underfoot.  The fender was wide, smooth, and comfortable to sit on - unless it was summer.  Then it was as hot as a blast furnace.  There was no air condition on the 4020.  I take that back.  You could control the speed of the "air condition" by how fast you drove.  Believe it or not, the old 4020 could move pretty doggone fast!  There was a rubber-lined hand-hold on the fender, like you see in the photo below, and that is what you'd hold onto while riding on the fender, with your hair blowing in the breeze.  Sometimes my cap would even fly off!

Sometimes after harvesting rice, we'd burn the field's stubble with a forestry drip torch.  It had diesel mixed with gas.  While the driver drove, the fender sitter held the torch and dripped burning fuel down into the rice stubble all around the perimeter of the field and along the levees.  You could see rabbits and rats running and the smoke rising high into the sky.  As the day turned to evening, you could see pillars of fire coming from fence posts that had caught fire.  If the fire got out of hand, the 4020 had a ditching blade on it that you could drop and make a ditch to break the path of the fire and put it out.

As you rode on the backroads around the farm sitting on the fender, the diesel from the exhaust would blow back and envelope you, but I learned to love that smell.  It seemed that you could see everything from that fender.  You could spot the cow that had just calved and had her baby hidden in the tall grass.  You could see down into the gully and watch the striped head turtles jump off of logs or nutria swimming with their noses sticking up above the water or bullfrogs in the cat tails in the irrigation canal.  You could see the steam rising from puddles on the asphalt road after a thunderstorm blew through and then the sun came back out.  You could watch red-tailed hawks circling in the sky above, then swooping down to snatch a rat from the fence row.

Today's tractors are nice (and expensive) and big.  They dwarf old tractors like the 4020.  In today's monstrous tractors, you ride in comfort in a hermetically-sealed environment in air-conditioned comfort, listening to country music in ergonomic chairs.  Computers and GPS control everything.  We unfortunately sold the old 4020.  I haven't forgotten the magic, though, of riding on its fender, seeing the world from the eyes of a ten-year old with my hat on backwards so it wouldn't blow off, while singing Conway Twitty, Crystal Gayle, and Don Williams songs to the top of my lungs while holding on to the rubber handle on the fender for dear life.