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I grinned as I drove down mom and dad’s driveway. A pile of red dirt was gleaming in the morning sun. My cousin Mark is carrying on the tradition of having that dirt piled somewhere on his place. Grandaddy, like Mark, was always working on the land somewhere and he needed that dirt for fill in. He built driveways with it, filled in washed spots with it and a host of other things. But mostly for us kids it was a great place to play.

As I turned north on Liberty Street I could almost see us cousins and Uncle Stan playing king of the mountain. Somebody climbed on top of the hill of dirt and kept everyone else from dethroning them. Of course that meant a lot of pushing and rolling in the sand that left a perpetual stain on everything else we touched after that.

But my favorite thing to do in the red sand was just to play in it. If it was a little bit damp you could build toad frog houses with it just as good as any beach sand. And if it wasn’t damp you could always go to the green hose outside and get some water in a tin syrup bucket and water it down. You’ve never built sand toad houses? Well, depending on how big a frog you want to invite, you put either your hand or your foot down and cover and pack it with sand. I usually always used my foot so I could use both hands to pack the sand good over it. You had to pack at least an inch of sand and ooooohhh sooooooo carefully withdraw your foot so as not to crack the house. It generally took me several tries before I was successful at having a toad house that wouldn’t fall down.

In reality I never put a frog in my house. I was scared of them. I didn’t want to touch them. But I do recall sister Cindy, who didn’t mind picking up the critters, put one in her little house that she built with her foot. I can still see the little gray creature peeking out from his little shelter.

When we finished playing in the red sand at the end of the day I’m sure we left red fingerprints on grandmama’s door, in her kitchen, in the bathroom and wherever else our little hands went.

She never fussed at us for tracking red dirt in her house. She just scrubbed it up with comet and a mop. But she would tell us to go wash that red stuff off of our face and hands before we could sit down to the table to eat. She didn’t have to say that twice because we always loved her fresh vegetables, sliced tomatoes, hot cornbread and sweet tea.

The long summer nights meant more outside time after supper and back to the sand piles we would go. But as twilight turned into dark and we stole into the house, tired from our days play, we each took our turn in the old white cast iron bath tub with a bar of golden Dial® soap and left a red ring of memories as the water drained out.

Regina is a reporter for the Pontotoc Progress.

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