As a pre-teen, Dad helped an older neighbor do his chores after school-this would have been about 1930..
Mr. Slocum had a pond built with a stand pipe and a water line that supplied gravity fed water to hydrants in the barn lots. That was a major upgrade from the hand pump in the well and the Rube Goldberg pipe affair to fill the stock tanks. Turn on the water and go do other chores while gravity did the work!
Dad would go for chores and more than once found the hydrants running over the tanks and making a mudhole in the lots. After hand pumping water for a lifetime, Mr. Slocum would forget to go back and turn off the hydrants.
One day Dad found neatly painted sign boards nailed to all the gate posts:
"TURN OFF THE WATER!"
