A Pile of Dirt!!

A pile of dirt! That's all my brothers and I needed to create weeks and months of amazing entertainment. Dad was one of the most creative fathers ever. He would dump a pick-up truck full of topsoil right in the middle of the back yard. With a 99 cent bag of green plastic army men, us boys would burrow holes in every part of the mound and pitch major battles for hours and days at a time. I mean even after dark.

I loved using my plastic green sniper to pick off the flame thrower of my opponent. I'd make dozens of bunkers that were manned by the riflemen down on one knee. Whoever created those guys deserves to be the wealthiest in the world. My creative imagination blossomed in those times and my kids did the same. I expect the pile of dirt to become a family tradition that goes beyond the next version of Play Station.

I remember clearing 3 feet of air with my Schwinn bicycle on that same mound of dirt. Our "Dirt Pile Olympics' produced many neighborhood heroics......and used a lot of Bactine spray. Those were the days when we had cuffs on our pants. Mum always loved cuffs. I say that sarcastically because she had to deal with the pounds and pounds of black dirt we'd bring into the house after a day of pitched battles on our knees.

You can only imagine the laundry Mum faced every day with 7 growing boys and 3 girls. Oh, the girls. Thank God for the girls. If it wasn't for them we'd probably never eat, sleep or have a clean bed. Like most girls in those days my sisters were being groomed to be homemakers and housewives. This rite of passage proved to be a great benefit to Mum because she needed all the help she could get........cloth diapers too!! Yuk!

Meanwhile, the boys were tasked with such daunting chores as taking out the garbage. Again, I'm being sarcastic. But, we did have garbage. Lots and lots of garbage. It wasn't a daunting task. But it wasn't all that fun either.

In those days we had a 'swill bucket' in the ground with a foot handle on the lid. This was where we dumped the food waste. It was so disgusting to open the lid of the swill bucket in summer because the heat produced millions of maggots. I would gag every time I lifted the lid to dump the waste.

And then once a week some guy would come by and pull the bucket out of the ground and throw it into a truck and haul it away. While the guy was throwing swill into the truck I was throwing up on the ground. Talk about the dirtiest job in the world!!

Here I am sandwiched between my two brother's Jim and John. I think every farm kid in those days played Cowboys & Indians (canceled today). In our case the entire neighborhood became an old western movie. We'd hide out in the cornfields and barricade ourselves behind the dirt pile.

Oh yea. The pile of dirt. It was the greatest bicycle jump ever. But our bikes were used for more than high flying acrobatics...all of about 3 feet with those heavy wheels and frame. We'd fold baseball cards, attach them to the spokes with clothespins and about 20 of us would ride up and down Rockland Street with a collectively loud whirring sound as if we were some kind of Hell's Angels army. (Hell's Angels didn't exist yet). It was my first experience being in a gang. It was so cool.

My only regret is that some of those cards could've been Honus Wagner and Mickey Mantle. What are they worth today??

Once they got too flexible in the spokes they lost their snap and the annoying sound. So, we'd reconstitute them into weapons to kill dozens of green army men at a time as we flicked the cards into the dirt pile. Ted Williams was my best flick ever. He was awesome!!

Those were the days, my friend. We thought they'd never end.