Oh, what the archaeologists may find!

First off, this is going great. It is funny that when Carrie saw the picture Andy posted, she said she believes us with our stories - she believes we "aren't even exaggerating."

That never even occurred to me. Those stories - all the ones from our childhood - are pretty crazy.

This is an ode to gumbo, however. Not the beautiful, slimy goodness gracing a vat of crabs ladled over rice, but the schizophrenic black dirt of our part of Texas.

When the place is flooded, gumbo is as slimy as dirt can be slimy. Complete mush - like pond scum at the bottom of a - you guessed it - pond. From this, crawdads would fashion bizarre little towers whose function I still do not understand.

As it dries, it turns to merely a slippery mess. This is where mudding trucks dream of. Mud boots sink deep and get sucked right off your feet. As it dries further, it cakes onto boots literally 4-6 inches thick. Just as heavy as it sounds, I assure you. This happened to be fun to go mudding in - four-wheeler or truck.

The next drier stage is where it got fun for kids. It turned to a clay. This black clay could be fashioned into a ball and flung at people. Upon contact, it would flatten like a cookie in the oven, and often stick. On light colored clothes, it would leave a gray circle. From here, it could be peeled off and re-balled up for further flinging. It was great for epic battles. Also, it could affixed to the end of a rigid stick and flung pretty much the length of the yard, though with little accuracy. Our yard was, as I remember, 436 feet long, and we could howitzer-ize those puppies about that far. That was an interesting discovery - the battles grew in scale.

As the dirt got drier, it would get firm and not very pliable or fun. Mud wars at this point were nearly sadistic. But as it got harder, it felt like rock - only brittle and crumbly. Chasms 8 inches wide and several feet long would snake around the yard as the water evaporated into an impossibly humid atmosphere. The chasms would snake downward, too, so you couldn't see more than up to 18 inches down, though they were far deeper. The problem was that by this point, the dirt was so hard that you could not readily dig it up with a shovel. So when our He-man or ninja turtle toys fell into the abyss, we could only hope they stopped at a reachable depth. If they fell far enough, we couldn't get to them before the rains came, sealing them up forever at various strata levels in our yard. Some weirdo archaeologists who are in to campy 80's toys are gonna have a field day there someday.

A quick note about those aforementioned crawdad towers: when they get dried out they were rocky, hidden towers of barefoot death.


Now for a request. I think we need stories of the pit and possibly the bricks at this point. I don't remember the pit much - especially when it was new and like 5 feet deep, so we are gonna need Andy for some good pit stories. Also, we need some Chanda and even Cherish stories. Cherish may need to tell more about what she has gathered from our crazy existence.