July 29, 2012

John Andrew (Wimpy) Rediker


John Andrew (Wimpy) Rediker was one of the most jovial and fun people I've ever met. My Uncle Wimpy always had a whopper of  a story to tell, from gold in the hills and cliffs around the holler where we all lived along the Joelton and Cheatham County line. To lights wandering aimlessly in the woods late at night used by witches or spirits having unknown intentions. The best thing you could count on was the story would always be interesting.
All the while Aunt Louise would be cooking something or canning that and shaking her head at him saying Daddy you stop that, he's gonna go get himself hurt trying to find that, or to see if that's real. The real stories, the events I remember are very real.
     It was a cold winter's morning of around 1995. Uncle Wimpy came over to the house and asked me to help him carry some water jugs he was going to fill down the way at an old spring he knew of. I dressed in some warm clothes and along we went. As I'm walking with him to the spring I thought, "it's to cold, anything water is gonna be froze solid as a rock." About a quarter-mile or so along Uncle Wimpy said, " that spring is right over here off the road." He took a long screw driver and a piece of pipe of about 8" length from his pocket. He then used the screw driver to prod a bit into the rock and ice. Much to my amazement water began to flow profusely from the rocks. He then slid the pipe into the rocks, nudged a few pieces of rock next to it and filled up the jugs. 
     Uncle Wimpy passed away on, 8 Nov 2002, a few years later, I was thinking about this and decided I would go see if that spring was still there. It took me a bit to find but the rocks were still nudged beside the piece of pipe and the water still poured from that pipe. I chuckled and thought, "Uncle Wimpy probably could have just given everyone a little water, but he'd rather show em' how to dig the well." : }

No comments:

Post a Comment