Water Witching at Tahlequah Junior High

My dad, Gene Carter was the son of a water well driller.  In fact, his uncle Jess Ross drilled wells too.  My grandfather always told him that  if folks wanted their well witched before they dug it, to do that but really, to look for water trees when they picked the well spot.  After his teen years of drilling wells with his father and uncle, my dad became a teacher.  He liked having summer off and it gave him a chance to do other things-- fishing, painting houses, trimming trees for people, and one Summer when I was five, building a new house.  One year when I was in Junior high, he took a job helping the Tahelquah Public Schools to improve Tahlequah Junior High.  With a buddy Jim Bridges, they were tasked with building a retaining wall of railroad ties just uphill  a few yards from the Junior High Gym.  It was hard work.  The ties had been dumped on top of the earthwork, so they had to do a lot of climbing and heavy hauling.  Inside the gymnasium, other workers had poured a new concrete floor and let it set up, but they failed to note the drain and were puzzling over how they'd be able to find it.  The old plumber told Dad and Jim to make dousing rods.  Both men were skeptical but there weren't any other ideas, so they got a coat hanger or something from Willie Wilson's shop and make L-rods.  They found a spot where the rods seemed to cross, and when they hammered into the concrete, they found the drain on the first hammer strike!  "Pure luck," they thought. 

Another task was to find the water lines from Willie Wilson's Wood Shop.  They figured they could start digging anywhere since their chance of finding the water line was going to involve a huge amount of work.  They playfully witched for it.  The grass was about knee-high out there, and they were just joking around by witching it.  Well, the spot those rods crossed over... Jim Bridges reached down and pulled up the first handful of weeds, and what should they find but a faucet above ground! 

Same Summer, the crew was looking for the Public Address System wiring between two buildings and one man had potted the yard with holes from looking here and there.  They witched for the wiring and found it just about 6 or 8 inches below the surface.

I'm not saying that water witching works, works for electrical wiring, works for faucet fixtures or anything else.  I just wanted to share this story because some Tahlequah Junior High alums may not know that water witching took place there on the school grounds.