The Dirtpile
With my father's passing, my old friends have resurfaced. When I was a kid, my playmate was a pretty girl from across the street whose name was Lauri Gravitt. From about 5 years old until 11 or so, we would play in the dirt on the edge of my parents yard next to a vacant lot.

You see, I'm sure many kids played in a sandbox, but not us. We played in the dirt, which we called the dirtpile since my Dad would order a load of topsoil to spread on the yard. Lauri and I would "help" Dad by slowly tearing down that dirtpile for our purposes. I saw the pile as a mountain that we would climb or use it to tunnel through. I don't think we were ever very successful with the tunneling. We weren't engineers, so we didn't shore up the sides or build a ceiling. The tunnels never held up.

The reason my Dad brought in topsoil was that the soil was very poor. The soil was made up of Caliche. Before the topsoil was brought in, I would play in the dirt which was a mixture of Cliche and red sandy clay soil. Using my imagination, I built a little town where I played with my Tonka toy trucks.

This was my job as a child. I would wake up early in the morning and go out to the dirtpile, which as Lauri pointed out to me now, was more of a ditch than a pile, and play. I played all day until it got dark. I didn't mind being out in the sun and there were no trees.

Well, I guess those were the days. No cares, no worries.