Move Over Martha Stewart!

There is no question that times were tough and resources extremely limited during the depression years.  However, we did have some things and were not destitute.  For example, I had a tricycle, my little sister had a kiddie car, and my big sister had a scooter. We also had some toys.  Daddy made many of our toys in his workshop in the garage. He also made stilts for us.  My sisters never mastered the stilts, but I became a stilt expert.  I could walk up and down stairs and even dance on the stilts. 

Despite the danger, in the winter we had great fun sledding on the bank by the Santa Fe Railroad Tracks, which were across the street from our house.  Daddy had made the  sled and we spent many happy hours crashing down the bank of crusted snow and into the street.  In the summer we were allowed to don our swim suits and "swim" in the water that accumulated in the ditch beside our street.  It was not a paved street, and when heavy rains came we felt we practically had our own swimming pool. 

My  favorite thing to do, however, was to make mud-pies.  My mud-pies were the envy of the neighborhood.  I made all sizes; big ones, little ones, even tiny ones.  I loved the feel of the soft slippery mud in my hands as I shaped them into stars, hearts and diamonds.  I decorated them with sand, which looked surprisingly like sugar, pebbles, dandelions and other greens.  They were gorgeous!  Move Over, Martha Stewart.  I baked them in the hot sun and then invited neighborhood kids over for pretend tea parties.  Once in a while, I used the mud for another purpose.  I had heard that mud-packs would make freckles go away, and so I occasionally made a mud pack for my face and lay in the grass and let it bake until it cracked off my face.  It didn't help.  My freckles were as vivid as ever.  Mother told me it was silly to even try to remove my freckles with mud, and that I should stick to making the most beautiful mud-pies the neighborhood had ever seen. 

And so it was. 
In Martha Stewart's words, "It was a good thing."