Good Year

Good Year is the community’s name for a stretch of calm and happiness, a remembered measure against which later settled periods could be recognized. After the boys had left, the days again seemed to drift into such an interval; the passage connects this respite not to idleness, but to steady weather and the work of making the community’s water supply more reliable.

A Name for Calm

The narration recalls that the community had named one earlier happy period Good Year. The calm after the boys’ departure is described as another spell of the same kind, rather than definitively identified as the original named year. Day followed day and week followed week without a reported crisis, giving the period its character through continuity and ease.

Weather and Work

The rains lasted late into the season, arriving as hard showers that soon cleared to fine blue weather. In the distance, the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge stood sharply outlined against the western sky, a remnant of the old world set against the community’s present life. In the mornings, Ish usually gathered enough people to work on a well. Their first shaft reached bedrock before reaching water because the hillside soil was thin; a second shaft went deeper and struck a good flow. They lined it with planking, covered it, and fitted a hand-pump, turning a hopeful spell into a practical improvement in daily life.

The Limits of Rebuilding

The well made water accessible, but the community did not restore its toilets. By then, people had grown accustomed to using outhouses, and rebuilding the system of pipes and tanks, with its need for hand-pumping, seemed to require more labor than it was worth. Their choice marks the period’s pragmatic character: they secured a workable water source without attempting to reproduce every convenience of the former infrastructure.