I noticed during the years I lived in smalltown that people who lived outside of smalltown seemed to grow up quicker than they did where I lived. I don’t know for sure, but I think there was something in the local drinking water that caused this problem. There were some people in smalltown who were in their fifties and still hadn’t grown up beyond their teenage years. Of course, everyone in smalltown had an opinion as to why this was so, but I always suspected there was something in the drinking water. My thought was that some of that old greenish blue copperous water from the local coal mine had gotten into the ground water, and from there, it had gotten into their wells. I don’t know what the copperous water would do to a person’s insides if they drank it, but it worked wonders on my cuts and open sores.
You outsiders might be wondering what is copperous water? Well, copperous water came from the water the local coal mine used to wash their coal and then let it feed into a small ditch near the mine and that water eventually made its way into a small river a couple of miles away. The water had a beautiful greenish blue tint and it was clear. You could look down into it from up above and see the bottom of the river, but it was deadly to the fish habitat. I didn’t miss the fishing in the river too much, all I ever caught out of it were big ole Carp before the copperous water came. Like I said, it killed all the fish, but it worked wonders on cuts and open sores.
I learned the copperous water had healing powers one day when I went swimming. I had a large old pus filled wound in my side that had festered and turned an ugly purple. I got the wound from toting a large fellow on the handle bars of my bicycle. His weight caused the handle bars to break off from the front forks and then the sharp metal of the broken fork punctured my right side just above my belt leaving a large round hole about the size of a quarter. It festered up something terrible and pus was oozing from it. Because the wound had been oozing pus for a few days I hadn’t been down to the creek swimming cause my mom told me it would get infected worse. But on this particular day it was very hot, hotter than normal, and I decided I was going swimming to cool off. If my sore got more infected than it already was, it would just have to get more infected. I went swimming in that copperous water in the creek, and by the next morning the pus had stopped oozing from the wound and the skin around the wound had turned a light pink and was beginning to heal. That was when I learned that copperous water had healing power and was a miracle sent from God. After that incident, every time I got a cut or abrasion, I went swimming in the creek. Some years later I got the bad news from home; the EPA had gotten involved because of the copperous water situation and the mine was closed putting several hundred smalltown people out of work because a few fish couldn’t live in it. Don’t the government ruin everything for us poor folks when they get involved? Now when I hurt I have to find a doctor to care for me and they most always want an arm and a leg in return for their services. Healing down at the creek was free. You just had to be aware of the snakes that called that place home. OTBP
