We didn't have a "drinking gourd" when I was growing up, and I always felt deprived ... in the early years, at least.
Instead, we had a common aluminum dipper (we all drank from the same dipper) beside the water bucket in the kitchen.
Germs aside, it offered a cool, refreshing drink, when the weather was cool, refreshing. During the summer, as I recall, we went directly to the source, the cistern just a few steps from the back porch, to fill the dipper.
The "drinking gourd," on the other hand, resided at a neighbor's house on a nearby hill. Judging from the frequency of our visits, they were probably distant relatives.
They had a well which, I thought, contained the coldest water around.
And that gourd, that marvelous old weather-beaten gourd. I just had to have a drink from it, even when I wasn't thirsty.
Oh, how I remember sipping slowly, dawdling, while enjoying both the cold water and the great shade of the tree near the well.
The poem:
CUP OF MEMORIES
The well water
was never colder
nor more sweet tasting
than when it was sipped
from an ordinary,
but memorably special
gray gourd dipper.© 1995
(originally published in Capper's)
Today's word: dawdling
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