Sandi Hutcheson: Bottling the battle

Every July for the past 50 years, my grandmother's family has reunited in the place they call "God's Country." Texas Valley is in the northwest corner of Georgia, in the foothills of the Appalachians.

When I was a kid, the reunions were at the old Smith family home place where Grandmom and her 10 siblings were raised. At the time, her oldest brother, Ralph, and his wife, Thelma, still lived in the frame house rumored to have served as a makeshift jail for Yankee soldiers during the Civil War. The house was never painted or air-conditioned. Indoor plumbing was added around the time Jimmy Carter was President.

The Smith family produced world-class cooks, men and women for whom Paula Deen would be proud to wash dishes. My mouth waters at the thought of Aunt Rosa's fried apple pies, Ralph's Brunswick stew, Thelma's fried chicken, Uncle Pop's yellow cake with chocolate frosting, and Bessie's creamed corn.

But the taste I remember best bubbled out of a spring about 30 yards from the house, under a giant oak tree. Massive rocks honed into blocks were set around the spot to create a natural cistern. Above it, a tin cup hung from a nail pounded into the tree.

A plastic bottle of Dasani cannot compare to a tin cupful of that cold spring water, much like a grocery store tomato is never as tasty as one plucked from a backyard vine.

As kids, we played in the creek running out from the cistern, hunting for crawdads and waging epic water battles, not with Nerf supersoakers but with simple Styrofoam cups.

The water was as cold as the inside of an old highway grocery store ice chest. Watermelons chilled in the spring could render one's lips too numb to compete in a seed-spitting contest. A blast of it on the back during a water battle could make you cry in pain.

We children were taught to keep body parts out of the drinking water. A kid who even thought about sticking in a big toe would get snatched up by the belt loop of his Wrangler cutoffs. The spring was the family's sole source of water, and it had to be protected.

Still, as precious as that water was, Uncle Ralph never thought to charge for a drink.

I haven't made it back for the family reunion in a few years, but, really, none of us can go back. Georgia Power bought the old home place years ago in order to build a hydroelectric plant. Vandals burned down the house after Ralph and Thelma moved out. The farmland was flooded, and the spring now feeds a lake that powers hairdryers, microwaves and electric cars.

Reunions now happen in the fellowship hall of the Baptist church, but other things have changed in the name of progress. Watermelons from the grocery store have no seeds.

Today's water battles are waged not with Styrofoam cups but with plastic bottles as big corporations purchase the rights to water sources and justify it by claiming folks will appreciate water more when they have to pay for it.

I wish someone would snatch these corporations up by their belt loops. And I wish I could grab a tin cup and dip myself one more drink from Ralph's spring.