A Quart of Water

Sometime between 1960 and 1961 there was a six month drought in the Virgin Islands. Compared to what we are going through now here in Texas, six months doesn't seem like a long time. But for all of us who had to survive on rain water collected in cisterns or (as was more often the case) 55 gallon drums, it was a real hardship.

We were living at Gifft Hill at the time and were lucky to actually have a concrete cistern, even though it was only 600 gallons. (There's more about our cistern here. It has quite a history.)

During the drought we learned how to conserve water. For a while Mom was able to do laundry on the usual Saturday. Before Dad went off to work he'd started up the generator so Mom could use the ringer washer. It also meant my sister Erva and I could listen to Story Hour on the radio.

Next to the washer was a big galvanized tub for rinsing the clothes. Mom washed the whites first, like sheets and underwear. They got put through the wringer and fed into the tub to get rinsed by being sloshed around by hand. Then they got put through the wringer again and were hung out on the line. The next batch of clothes were lights and got washed and rinsed in the same water as the whites. Sometimes she could get three loads done in the white water before she drained it out onto plants and put the rinse water in the washer. But I think most of the time it was two load before she switched out the water. Anyway that last clothes to get washed were Dad's greasy mechanic work clothes.

Realize all that water was siphoned out of the cistern and into buckets that were then poured into the washer and tub. You can see the hose in this picture filling a large enamel pot. (Erva still has it!) See that plant in the center front? It's a baby papaya. Over to the right on the ground is the rinse tub. This was not only our laundry area, it was where we took our "baths."

See that quart jar by the red basin? That's how much water we used to take a bath. We'd pour a little water into the basin and wet down a wash cloth and get it all soapy. We'd use that little bit of soapy water to wet down and then scrub ourselves clean. The rest of the water in the quart was used to rinse off using another wash cloth.

Yes. A person can get clean in a quart of water.

There came a point though, when we could no longer do the laundry. But that's a story for next week, when you'll met Nora and Steve and their three dogs.

Remembrances of Gifft Hill - Dad's Cistern

My last post touched, just a bit, on being without electricity. Being without power isn't nearly as difficult as being without water.

Many people, like our nearest neighbors the Thomas's, had four or five 55 gallon drums to catch rain water. If there was a draught (dry times are usually December through May) then water had to be hauled by donkey and/or mule from the catchment. A donkey or mule was loaded with dumb boxes which carried four, five gallon tins. So basically, 20 for 40 gallons is what the Thomas's would use in a day or two for all their needs, from cooking, to bathing, to washing clothes.

The Castle up at Gifft Hill was special in that our little four room shack actually had a 600 gallon cistern. I recounted how the cistern was built here.

This is a wonderful picture shows Erva playing with a basket ball. It was probably taken around 1957. Behind her you can see a stone wall under construction. That's Dad's cistern. It was the first thing we started to build when we moved up there. The cement mixer is to the right. Mom mixed the cement. She had the recipe down pat; just so many shovel fulls of sand, so many shovel fulls of concrete, and just the right amount of water.To the left, next to the stone wall, you can see the little cistern that "came with the house," and the gutter feeding into it.

We picked, gathered and hauled every single rock. We scavenged most of them from an old stacked rock wall that was on our property. But sometimes we took the jeep, hitched up our little Sears trailer, and went out rock hunting along the Gifft Hill road. We were like the three bears, only there were four of us. Dad got the biggest rocks, Mom got the medium sized ones, Erva got small ones, and I picked up the smallest ones of all.

While Dad was doing rock work and Mom was mixing cement, Erva and I filled in the gaps between the stones with cement and often pushed in shells and little bits of beach glass.

Here's a picture of our "wash room," the area behind the Castle where we took our baths. You can clearly see the stone work and the syphon hose filling up the large blue enamel coffee pot. Erva still has the pot, proudly displayed on top of one of her cabinets. Next to the pot you can see one of the round red plastic wash basins we used to take our baths. The over-turned tub was used to rinse clothes on the days we did laundry.

Unfortunately, we no longer own the property up at Gifft Hill. There's another whole story about why we had to sell it and move to St. Thomas which I will not go into here. Suffice it to say, each of us mourned the loss in our own may.

But, several years ago, I finally braved a visit to see the place I had loved so well as a child. There, to my delight and amazement, was Dad's cistern. The new owners, in building their home (which you can see in the background) had let the cistern stand, a testament to its ability to hold water. No one knocks down a good cistern.


Here's another view of it.

And lastly, here's a close-up of some of Erva's and my handy-work where we pushed shells into the cement between the stones.

At the time we were living up at Gifft Hill we weren't doing anything unique or unusual. Most everyone lived as we lived. But in retrospect, we were a bit like pioneers. Mom called it glorified camping.

Remembrances of Gifft Hill - Back Story

Having a concrete floor AND cistern was quite the luxury item. The little wooden houses most everyone lived in had hard packed dirt floors or wooden ones. Few people had actual cisterns. They collected their rain water as the Thomas’s did, in 55 gallon drums. During dry spells there were catchments, in somewhat central locations, that collected water into large cisterns. People would go to the catchments to get water if they ran out. (More on that another time.) So, for the little house up at Gifft Hill to have both, was quite remarkable.

In 1927 my grandfather Alfred Boulon, my mother's father, bought Trunk Bay. His idea was to build a summer home and use it as a retreat, a place the Boulon family could go to get away from the hustle and bustle of Puerto Rico.

The original single room of The Castle was probably built in the early 1920’s. In 1928 there was a big hurricane and it was then the building was carried off its foundation and deposited across the yard.

By 1929 my grandfather was building a concrete storage/camp building and a cistern on the beach at Trunk Bay. This building would serve as the family’s living quarters until they got the main house build. All the materials to build it had to be brought in by boat. One of the people Grandpa B. hired to help with the concrete work was a man named Samuel Powel.

In this picture you can see the large Main House on the hill to the left. Below it is a little building we called the Shoe Box. And on the beach you can see the concrete building that served as the family’s temporary home while the Main House was being built.

And here's a picture of the actual building. See that flag? I have it.

We don’t know what arrangement was made, but Mr. Powel got the sand and cement from Trunk Bay. Load by load, the supplies were hauled all the way to Gifft Hill, a journey of three, maybe three and half miles, over steep winding trails. One must realize hauling bags of cement and sand all the way to Gifft Hill was done by donkey. There were no roads or cars on the island back then. Each 100 pound bag of cement was probably divided in half and placed into dumb-boxes that were carried by a donkey, as was every last grain of sand.

So it was that between 1929 and 1932, Samuel Powel hand mixed and hand poured the floor and 600 gallon cistern up at Gifft Hill. Some 25 years later, my parents bought the land and the little house from…(all together now) Samuel Powel. It was kind of like coming full circle.

Remembrances of Gifft Hill - The Castle

The consensus among the Denhams is that our fondest memories of living on St. John are of the years we lived at Gifft Hill.

When we first moved to Gifft Hill, the Thomas’s were the only other family living up there. At that time, it was a pretty isolated place, being as it was, three miles from Cruz Bay and at the end of a mile long trail that was more like a rocky river bed than a road.

We were the first white people to live up there. And, like the majority of people on St. John, we lived in a tiny old wooden shack. We called it the Castle.

What do I mean by tiny old wooden shack? Originally it had been one room about ten feet wide and 20 feet long. It had been built about a foot off the ground. We heard a story that it had been blown off its foundation and lifted across the yard during a hurricane. To keep that from happening again a second room had been built of exactly the same dimensions. This second room had a hand poured pitted concrete floor. The first room was hauled back into place and secured to the new room. It had now become a large luxurious two room shack with matching peaked roofs.

By the time my parents bought the seven acres on which the Castle stood, it had morphed into four rooms and a tiny porch. One tiny room, no more than five by eight became the kitchen. The fourth tiny room became my parents’ bedroom, whose double bed occupied most of the space. The porch served as an auxiliary to the kitchen and was where we washed our dishes.

Here you can see the basic floor plan in this sketch I drew. There was probably less room around the beds and we had a rocking chair and some other pieces of furniture in the living room besides what I’ve drawn in.

We had no electricity and no running water. We did have a privy and, unlike our neighbors, the Thomas’s who collected rain water into several 55 gallon drums, we actually had a 600 gallon cistern.

The tin roof leaked in predictable places. The room where Erva and I slept was the original room, the one that had been blown off its foundation. A third of the room was divided by a curtain and the area behind it served as the family's colset. Places in the floor of the closet were rotted through and we could see the ground. I used to imagine fantastic treasures hiding under the floor. The wall between our bedroom and the living room had a serious case of rot, due to the valley of the two peaks meeting at that point. Whenever it rained the valley leaked which made the walls sort of weep. I always knew Christmas was approaching because in December pretty yellow mushrooms would grow out of the wall right over my bed.

We took our baths outside under the open sky at the back of the house. There was a shower curtain to provide privacy so those in living room looking out the window wouldn’t see a naked body.

Here’s picture of our first visit to the Gifft Hill property. You can clearly see the two peaks, the little porch and the add-on rooms to the left. In the back ground, center left, you can see a tall tree. That’s the mompoo Dad hung a swing in for my 10th birthday. In this picture, I’m coming around the back of the Willy’s station wagon. Mom and Erva are to the right. Our friend Bobby Mrazek is by the driver’s side door. The man standing slightly in front of Mom is our soon to be neighbor, Heber Thomas. That’s our jeep, the Yellow Dragon, in front of the station wagon. I think we all fell in love with the place as soon as we saw it. There was at least an acre of flat ground, a rarity in the islands. And the view of the south side of the St. John was, and still is, spectacular. On a clear day we could see not only to Ram’s Head Point but beyond to Virgin Gorda, some 35 miles away, in the British Virgin Islands. But always prominent were the white cliffs of Reef Bay.

Here’s a picture of the view taken from the spot where my swing used to be. This is what I saw as I’d soar out over the valley. Of course, back in late 1950’s and early 60’s there were no houses or roads on those hillsides.