The Bathtub

We were along the South Dakota and Minnesota line looking at cattle in the mid-1990s with John Delaney of Lake Benton, Minn. We were looking at Hereford herd bulls that the Delaneys had penned up at this old farmstead. All of them were drinking out of a clawfoot bathtub. We were in the process of remodeling my Great Grandfather H.F. Ficke’s house where my son and his wife along with their family live now.

My wife Brenda made a comment about how she always wanted a clawfoot bathtub. We just jokingly said to John that the tub would look nice in our Nebraska farmhouse. He said, “Do you want it?”

We said, “Sure what do we owe you?” I can’t remember if any money was exchanged. If there was, it wasn’t much.

The next morning when we came to load up a bull we had purchased from them, he said don’t forget your bathtub. We threw it on the very back of the stock trailer and brought it home. I kind of half-assed redid it and it’s still there at the kids’ house.

When we still lived at the house, I was an elder at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Pleasant Dale, Neb. for a time. On Sunday mornings, when we were still feeding silage and ground hay to the cattle (everything we eventually took away from them in our forage grazing scenario working in-tandem with nature). Brenda knew as soon as the cows got done eating, they would start drinking and our well couldn’t keep up, and it shut the water off at the house. So, she would run two to four inches of water in the bathtub for me. That is all she could get filled before the cows really got to drinking. She got it as warm as possible, but it never stayed too warm. However, I could come in and take a bath to get to church to get ready for services.

Noteworthy: The well the cows and two houses were using back then pumped (at the most) 12 gallons per minute. Our new well pumps a whopping, 15 gallons per minute, and we think it’s a big deal.

Yes, water is a big deal. I take it very seriously.