Norval poked the tip of a weathered juniper twig into the cracks between rocks. Just a month ago he'd helped his father, Oscar, wrestle these boulders into place, blocking a gully high up the flanks of the Wind River Canyon.
Yup, the mortar had set up good and hard.
No sign of a leak anywhere. Creek water had backed up behind the small dam, just enough of a pond to channel the flow into a six-inch pipe. The water mirrored massive bulwarks of rimrock, rearing high against the eastern sky.
Anchored to a shed-sized boulder further up the side canyon, ropes and pulleys waited in case they had to haul more supplies up to the head-race. The block and tackle had been a life-saver, getting all those bags of mortar up the last steep stretch. Oscar, a certified steam engineer, had so many tricks up his sleeve, he could solve almost any mechanical problem.
The teenager had just started skidding down the treacherous slope when he heard the revving of a car motor from down below. Someone had branched off from the canyon-bottom highway. The engine labored up the dirt drive towards his home, several hundred feet below him.
Norval whooped and leaped down the scree. Must be his brother Phil, due home on leave from the navy!
Good thing he'd already checked the couplings of pipes on his way up. He didn't want to waste a moment now. He slithered past the reducer where the larger pipe funneled into a narrower one, which accelerated the water flow. After moving into the canyon earlier that year -- 1943 -- his savvy father had bought eight hundred and twenty feet of this four-inch pipe at scrap iron prices from an old disused drilling rig.
A little further on, Norval reached the spot where they'd unloaded supplies from the truck which could go no higher. He broke into a run down the gentler slope. He could hear glad voices now, and soon loped around the last switchback.
Yes, it was Phil! Everyone had put chores aside to greet him. Norval got a brotherly punch to the shoulder. "Yow!" Phil said. "Where'd those hard muscles come from?"
"Hauling pipe," Norval shot back, grinning. "Least I don't have to haul water no more."
Everyone ushered Phil inside to see how their kitchen now had running water.
"It goes to the roadside service station, too," Norval told him. "And to those tourist cabins you and Ken and Lyle built."
Phil tapped a light bulb, hanging over the kitchen table. "You got power, too?"
Someone flipped the switch, and yellow light washed back and forth with the swing of the naked bulb.
"No more kerosene lamps," their mother said, voice lilting with relief.
"Come see the generator!" Ken and Lyle said, pulling Phil out the door.
Norval trailed along. "Dad and Ken and I drove up to the gold mine and bought their old Pelton wheel," he told Phil. "They didn't need it no more, what with their big new turbine."
The four-inch pipe fed into a quarter-inch nozzle, which spurted water at high pressure against the vanes of a 16-inch wheel. From its shaft a pulley ran to a generator.
"Hundred and ten volts," Oscar told his sons. "It might even work to run the pumps at the gas station."
"Don't forget, Mama wants to hook up a washing machine!" Norval said.
Dad scratched his head. "Not safe yet. Problem is, the generator sometimes over-speeds. It needs a governor to regulate the voltage, but we can't afford one."
Phil rose from examining the generator. "I've got an idea."
A couple days later, Phil -- who'd inherited his father's ingenuity -- finished jury-rigging a governor. He'd wired in a volt-meter that would trigger a series of switches if the voltage rose above 120.
Norval burst out laughing. "The volt-meter engages this?" He pointed to the heating element salvaged from an electric range.
Phil shrugged. "Does the trick! Loads the system just right."
Norval whooped. "Mama's gonna get her washing machine!"
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prompt: legacy
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A true story taking place in rural Wyoming, about 10 miles south of Thermopolis. (When the Wind River leaves the Wind River Canyon, it becomes the Bighorn River.)
My father Norval wrote about their off-the-grid electrical system: "That was the way we controlled it. It wasn't good enough for a clock, but it ran the lights, and that was much much nicer than using a kerosene lamp." "As long as everyone did their wash on a different day, it was okay."
Norval carried on his family legacy as another clever Mister Fix-It.
Photo at top: the scene across the canyon from my grandparents homestead.
Drawing below: the illustration from Lester Allan Pelton's patent application for the Pelton water wheel.
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