Nobody seems to know what a pumphouse is. That’s perplexing to me. If, as is likely, you’re not sure either, the basic situation is that if you don’t live where there is a municipal water system you need a well and a pump to pull the water up and out of the ground. You also likely want something that keeps pressure in your water system so there is often an air-bladder system. The whole mess is controlled by an electrical unit that knows when to power on both devices and hence, far from the city, you have running water. All of these bits and pieces are subject to the elements unless you protect them so you build a tiny shed around them and that is the “pumphouse”.

This summer I had two primary projects to keep up with my property and one of them was re-siding our aging pumphouse. I redid the roof two years ago as half of it had caved in and the old sheathing and siding were now in a similar state, having been used as scratching textures for our goats. Plus it’s approximately 8000 years old so off I went to get the mess of siding, insulation etc… that it would take to fix up and ensure it lasted another decade or two.

When I shared at work that I spent my weekend working on the pumphouse I unilaterally got the same reaction. “What’s a pumphouse?”. Even from one of my co-workers who grew up in a rural area, far flung from any real city. I remember him telling me about a brewery with that name though and always wondering what it meant.

The dissonance between being surprised that everyone would know what I was talking about vs the reality was really interesting for me to contemplate. There is this constant divide between my experience and anyone else that works in the other direction too but we tend to have enough shared experience to build language that bridges it. I expect there to be surprises about acronyms, work jargon and other language meant to be used in particular settings but the notion that a pumphouse was not a universal concept caught me off guard. Looking back, of course it’s not. If you grew up in the city you probably never saw one. If you lived elsewhere perhaps there was another word for it or it was just “the pump” or something else. My parents tell me that it’s quite common these days to have a system that taps into your well line below the frost line so that you don’t need a pump house and of course their’s is more “dog house” height so not a proper pumphouse.

When we first moved to this neck of the woods we lived with my Grandparents near a small creek. I was pretty young still and my Grandpa liked to recruit me for chores and helping out around the property. They had five acres and it was a handful to care for. One weekend Grandma asked him to find out why our water pressure seemed to be falling off. The kitchen sink had over time slowed to, not a trickle, but a fraction of the pressure that we used to wash dishes with. He stationed me in the kitchen after disconnecting the feed lines for the faucet and went off to the pumphouse where he had an air-compressor to blow out the line. My job was to let him know if anything was coming through the feed line. I dutifully held the feed line while sitting on the kitchen floor regarding it rather directly until I heard a weird humming sound. To my surprise the end of the feed line erupted with mud and sand. By the time I had redirected the flow of gunk I looked like a novice chimney sweep.

Grandpa walked into the kitchen to check on how it was going, took one look at me and cracked up. It wasn’t a mean schaundenfreude laugh, it was an eyes closed, creased and wrinkled laugh of empathy. We both started cracking up and I remember him saying “Come here son”, giving me a hug and both of us laughing at the silliness of the whole thing. My Grandfather was one of the toughest human beings I ever met, a boilermaker and man who worked with a tough crowd and in that crowd he was one of the toughest. He was also a gentle and kind soul and after moving into his home for a while this was one of my first moments where I felt that so completely. I can still smell the firs, hear the creek and see Caty cat sitting on the gate just outside of that pumphouse. There were old rusty trailer axles that he’d weld onto frames to sell when work at his welding shop was slow, the smell of swisher sweets in an old flat-bed truck that he had to double clutch and him offering me a plug of tobacco and telling me when I told him “no thank you” that’s good cause he’d have chewed me out if I started. I looked up to him while still knowing I could never be anything like him and am glad we became close in the fullness of time.

I’m a lot more like my Dad who I’m pretty sure confused most people except his parents to start with. Well, maybe them too. Grandpa once told me that Dad was different and at the age of three explained to him, while he sat wide-eyed, how a go-cart works after looking at it parked next to their car. My Dad is a lot like a well reflecting some things back on the surface but when you look closer you might get vertigo. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know it though because he’s always under-stated. It’s kind of like a mountain goat living on a cliff. They can’t imagine being afraid of heights. I remember long ago in the house my parents bought, not far from my Grandparent’s place, a windstorm that came through and made our long road from town nearly impassable. When I got home from work that night I pulled into our driveway to see our pumphouse on its side. We lived in the woods in a set of hills piled high by glaciers. The ground was half rounded rocks and the trees were second generation, tall and strong but even that didn’t protect the pumphouse and the well head sat there exposed to the elements.

Seeing all the damage broke something inside of my stubborn know-it-all teenage brain. There were trees and debris everywhere and my Dad recruited me to help clean up the mess. Imagine an infinite number of douglas fir branches everywhere in your yard that you picked up, tossed into the back of an old pickup truck and hauled to a pile on the five acres next door. Now imagine doing that for hours and hours and hours. I knew my Dad was very smart and worked hard but now I got a crash-course in his ability to grind. He helped me see the value of momentum, having a goal and not thinking about quitting until it was done. Infinity wasn’t a barrier to him. He knew how to put his nose to the grindstone and that’s when I learned that he was just as tough as my Grandpa. You had to look deep to find it and he might not ever see it. I think this is because there is no benchmark for the kind of toughness my father is. It’s not just the physical intimidation that all ironworkers have. It’s a mind that could have worked at Los Alamos or NASA if it wanted to.

I remember him taking me to dinner one night when my wife was in the hospital getting ready to give birth to our oldest. I was stressed beyond belief and so I began reading about TCP/IP because when my brain can’t stop it’s best to put it to work. TCP/IP was new-ish back then in the business world and I can see in my mind explaining to my Dad how subnet masks work. Now I can see it though I couldn’t then. A very thin smile and the same glint in my Dad’s eye that my Grandfather had after I had been covered with mud and sand. It took me a long time to register and wonder about it and now I think I understand it. He knew I was terrified and in that moment knew that it would all be OK but he also knew I couldn’t know that and needed to be distracted. He saw right through me right then. He saw me perhaps no less than he did when I was born. He KNEW what I was doing and what I needed in that moment more than I did.

Around this time he would go back to school, change careers and start down a whole new path. He’d write computer programs that dealt with neural networks a decade before I was exposed to them and eventually started teaching math. Of course he also raised that pumphouse back up after that storm. Reflecting on these stories maybe that’s why I seem surprised that nobody knows what a pump house is.

My pumphouse is at the end of our three acres and just like when I rebuilt the roof I had to haul all of the panels of siding, insulation and tools across our property on my shoulders. I replaced rotten footers and framing where I could and took out all of the disintegrated sheathing and siding. The new siding is now backed by insulating panels, secured by spray in foam and the door is insulated and ringed with draft barriers. Instead of the 250 watt heat lamp that I used to keep in it I use a 100 watt bulb and my most recent check showed that the inside was a good 10 degrees higher than the outdoor temperature. More than enough to protect the pipes through our winter. Two coats of paint and several tubes of caulk mean that it’s sealed up from the elements. The paint job and trim aren’t perfect, I was in a hurry, but it’s far better than what I started with and the roof is still holding strong. My Dad and I still trade notes on what makes a good pumphouse and I’m glad that both are in good working order. After all, you need to take good care of the pumphouse if you like to have running water.

Pumphouse