"We didn't have our own water well - we were in an agricultural area with a concrete block cistern. It was hooked up to the agricultural water distribution system, for the orange groves. There were 6 or 7 other houses that used the same cistern. We had to drive and get water out of the stand pipe with gate valves. You had to stand on the pipe so the water would flow into another pipe, such as the one going to our cistern. One went to the north about a quarter of a mile to four other residences besides ourselves.
"We had to fill the cistern every other week. It would take about an hour between turning the pump on and off.
"When I got to be bigger I could run the system myself but I couldn't drive yet, so mom would drive me down there. The 30 horse motor would bring the water out and into the gravity system. It wasn't pressurized. Once you turned the water on it would take 12-15 minutes to build up in the pipe so it would go to fill our cistern. We would tell the others who used the water that we were going to fill our cistern, [and] would they want us to fill theirs. Our was a 15 square foot, and about 10 feet deep with a hatch cover and a steel pipe ladder on the side.
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