I went looking for a quote from Father Thomas Merton on how nice September weather can be and found this instead:
And after reading such a nice description of all the sights and joys to be found when wandering around outside in the country, where do think my thoughts landed?
On Uncle Tinkie and the old bath tub that he had situated adjacent his pig pen down on the farm. And while I could not find any photos of Tinkie’s tub, I recall it very well.
As you drove into the Ridgell farm at the end of Long Neck Road, the tub was one of the first things you saw because it was only a few feet off the road in front of the pigpen. We used to joke about Tinkie himself using the tub once a week to bathe in because there was no indoor plumbing in the house. The other joke was – the pigs may have a tub, but the humans don’t. Go figure.
Unlike Mertons’s tub that he stumbled upon in the woods, Tinkie’s did not have a nearby spring to continuously supply water to it. Tinkie filled the tub with buckets of water that he transported from the house.
Funny but I have never before associated Tinkie with Merton. It took a bathtub to do so.
Even though I struck out finding any photos of Tinkie’s tub, that trusty internet thingamajig came through proving once again you can Google and find just about anything:
No songs about farm bathtubs that I could find, but here is a nice tune about farming in general: