Say you wanted to raise
That sweet Nebraska water
Up out of your granddaddy's well
That cold clear elixir
Travelled bubbled and jostled
Down from some snowbound peaks
Through lightless fissures
Rollin right under this
Three hundred acres of starlit farm

Say your handle
Once a fine forged specimen
Had creaked its way through
Fifty years of bucket pullin
And the missus is just plain
tired of crankin
And you never want to send
Another grapple down seventy feet
After one more rope-broke bucket

Well sir, let me ask you . . .
How you gonna know a
Mutilated rack from a
Chinese windlass
An oscillating column from a
Bilge ejector
Your æolipile from your
Persian drill when you go to
Build that fine crankin motor

Without Doctor Conklin's
Universal Illustrated
Cyclopædia of Mechanical Motion

Answer me that!