\n
\n
\n![](\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/03\/AT-logo-white.png\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
COVID-19 and all of the virus awareness going on lately takes me back to a world far different than the one we live in today \u2014 far different than even a few months ago.<\/p>\n
We always had hired hands on the ranch, coming and going, especially at meal time. Working in the hot sun could create a big thirst, and kept in the shade outside the kitchen door, on a bench, sat a 5-gallon bucket of water. Next to it hung a long-handled metal dipper for use in getting a drink. The men would line up, one behind the other, and wait until the man in front of them finished drinking, then slurp their turn with the dipper, one after the other. It didn\u2019t seem unusual, unhealthy, odd, or out of line to anyone. Most ranches and farms had the same traditional setup.<\/p>\n
My mom usually filled the water bucket out of the garden hose, for that was the same water that came out of our faucets. And that water came out of the Collins Creek irrigation ditch. Water wells were scarce as hen\u2019s teeth back then. If you didn\u2019t have a spring, you had to get creative. Grandpa\u2019s house had a spring \u2013 ours didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
It was probably impossible to buy bottled water in those days, had anyone thought of it, although Henry Stein had a bottled water company for a time in Aspen. Mill Iron Sparkling Water, or some such, billed as fresh and clean, out of a spring on his ranch. Jesse Maddalone, Jesse\u2019s son, was the delivery driver.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n