Making Mud Pies

One warm summer day when I was about five or six, Dad and Mother had to go to Burley, Idaho after something.  I was taken down to Uncle Vance and Aunt Vida’s place to play with Cousin Marilyn, while they were gone.  Marilyn was about two years older than I was. We played, swung on the big rope swing out under the trees in the back yard and had a good time.  Then we decided that we would make some mud pies.  We mixed up a nice batch of mud to make our pies or cookies out of.  While we were looking in the old root cellar near where we had our pies laid out we found a light brown tube of jelly like stuff.  When we mixed the jelly like substance to our pies it greatly improved the texture.  We would lay them on a board and pat them out and were certainly proud of ourselves when we looked at our array of pies.

When Aunt Vida called us in for dinner, hurried and washed our hands and cleaned up.  As we were eating, Uncle Vance asked us what we had been doing.  We excitedly told them what we had been doing and how good our array of pies looked.  We told him we found some of the best stuff to mix into our pies.  He asked us where we found it and what it looked like.  We said, “Down in the old cellar.”  Uncle Vance’s face went white, he got up from the table and went outside.  When he came back he told us we had been using dynamite.  It was some that Grandfather Lind had used years before.  It was old and had liquefied and even the slightest jar could have made the nitroglycerin in it explode.  Luckily he could find no more.

I’m sure the Lord was looking over us that day and had something more in this life for both of us to do.