In the late 1950s, in rural Spain, my family would spend the summer in a large agricultural farm where irrigation was from well water. The well was not a vertical shaft but a narrow spiral stairway dug down into the ground, maybe 10 or 15 m. The narrow, low ceiling, stairway down was damp and slippery and the walls were wet and dim light-bulbs lit the way down. Along the upper edge of the wall bare electric wires on porcelain holders and they powered the pumps at the bottom.
Outside, by the well, there was a very big water reservoir which we used as a swimming pool and went there almost daily.
Going down that stairway was dangerous and as a kid I had been warned repeatedly to never go down there. But I was just a kid and being told not to do something just fueled my curiosity. One day, I asked one of the workers or laborers if he would take me down and he did, obviously not knowing I had been told not to do it. I never would have dared to go on my own. We went down, I saw the electric cables which I had been told were extremely dangerous, diverse knife switches and fuses, the noise of the pumps, etc and then climbed back out alive and well.
I walked directly home and by some mystery that I have not deciphered to this day my mother already knew I had been down there and she viciously beat the crap out of me. Because in those days it was acceptable and because she was a very mean person. I never figured out how she found out. It could be that my sisters went home while I was down there and told her but I do not remember that part. Only that my mother was waiting for me.
That was my first experience with electricity. Very painful.
Funny how so many decades later I can remember it all with photographic precision.
I guess if I learned anything is that authorities can be more dangerous and painful than electricity. Beware of both.
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