Cape Breton's Magazine

Willy Pfetrie, a Man who Finds Water Yes, I can find water. Any place I go. Oh, yes, I heard tell of it years ago, so I just tried it, see how it would work. Went to a spring- cold spring you know, and tried it out. I saw it was working then, so I started m trying it. Oh, I been,..I suppose nov/ 40 years since I knew about that. I was surprised. I can't hold it. I can brace my two feet, I can't hold it at all. It'll twist, keep on twisting, I can't stop it. Keep on turning on the end. You just put the prongs across your hands this way. And if it's gonna go it'll go down, you can't hold it, I don't have to move my hand, and it'll twist turn right in my hand. If I've got one anyways big or something, jeez, if I tried to hold it it'd tear me to pieces, the strain on me, the terriDie srraxn on me m trying ro noxa it. xr ertects ray whole body when I try to hold it. It won't cut me, but a small stick will break. It'll twist right off, I can hold it in my hand but it will twist right off. And I can find the depth of the wa? ter too. If it was 50 feet • say that the edge of the seam xvas here. Well, I've got to keep on going out, going out and perhaps it was 50 feet, well then I'd go past it and then I'll come on in and just the minute I get the depth it'll jump. Well, now, if it was 20 feet it'd be the same thing. And if it was only 6. I've got to keep coming, keep coming, and it v;on??t move till I end up at the depth of it • it'll just twist. Then all you have to do is measure from the seam to where I'm standing at • and that'll give you the depth. That's where you'll strike the water. I can't tell the amount of water. Only thing, when you strike the water you'd have to dig down further, the same as when you're digging a well. The idea there is, when you've got your seam you dig so the water is coming in all right around it. You can use alder or poplar, apple crutch or hazel. I just use the alder, the alder is the handiest for to get to. Sometimes you go some places, an old farm or some place, you get an apple crutch. Apple and chestnut tree I guess is all. There's only 5 or 6 kinds of wood that'll work. Take spruce or fir or birch or maple • it wouldn't work at all. I'll just tell you what it is. Back in the Biible, in the Old Testament, where Jacob put the rods in the tubs for to turn the animals in the different colors • rings you know • animals he took from his father-in-law • well, it's some of the wood he used. It's v;ay over in the Old Testament, way over in Genesis: "And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree;and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods," That's where he went to work and took those rods and took all the good cattle away. See, the ones that wasn't fattened he wouldn't put the rods to, only the good ones. Today you see all the cattle and animals with the rings and different colors • well that's supposed to be what happened there from that. You've seen those horses and things with rings round and different colors and shapes and everythir' • well they claim that that's what it was, see? But it only seems that this wood that he used now • that could be all wood relations • the different kinds of rods that he put in. The others don't seem to be any good. Why wouldn't spruce or fir or beech or birch be all right? Why not that bark? That's Genesis 30, verse 36. But I didn't know about that before I found out I could find water. It was afterwards I saw that, I don't know what you'd call it. Some say about my hand, across your hand. Supposed to be that line when you double your hand up. (See photographs of Willy's hands.) Now yours, you see, parts. I've got them together • one seam right into the other • it joins. Yours'11 go clear Cape Breton's Magazine/5