Dirt & Worms and Silver Spoons

Dirt & Worms and Silver Spoons(Evangeline) This is a true story. I wrote this to give to my grandson on his 4th birthday.


I had a good idea today. I heard my Grandaddy talk about a house that used to be where I found an old spoon sticking a little ways out of the ground like somebody started to eat something and just squished the spoon in the ground and the ground started to eat it. The way Grandaddy talks about the house the spoon came out of, it was a real big house with fancy things. It burned. The people lost all their stuff. They built another house out of stuff people gave them. I like the new house but Grandaddy says it is just built out of scrap. I don’t know what he means by scrap but I like the house and I really like the people who live there, Mr. & Mrs. Morrow. They are really nice except Mr. Morrow shoots crows. He says he has to. They mostly raise fishing worms. They have big rectangles in lots of places and they are full of worms like the kind you get to go fishing with in a round box. Anyways, you don’t have to live in a fancy house to be nice and I like talking to Mrs. Morrow. She was paying me 5 cents to dig a round box of worms but one day I put dirt in the box instead of worms and she told me all about how you have to work for what money you get and if you don’t you’re cheating and that’s not nice. I cried because I was mad at me.

Mrs. Morrow gives me Juicy Fruit. She chews it, too, but she spits hers out in a few minutes. I don’t know why. I chew mine until it is time to eat.

I don’t always like being four. The big people don’t listen and sometimes you know things you could tell them, but they won’t listen.

I couldn’t get anybody to listen about the spoon, so I dug at it a little bit every day and finally I was able to pull it out. While I was sitting there on the ground digging it out I noticed the edge of some rocks. After I got the spoon out, I started digging in the dirt just a little bit every day. Pretty soon I had dug out a whole step. Some pieces of the rocks were broke but it was still a step. It was the steps to the Morrow’s old house. I am just four but I can tell that much. I try to tell the big people, but they won’t listen.

I go back every day and dig some more. Soon I see two steps. I sit on the second step and touch bare feet to the bottom step. I look at the moss and worms. I see where flowers have tried to grow but couldn’t make it because the trees are all grown up over the steps and you need sunshine to grow flowers.

I think about it and decide I will call this secret place the sunshine club and I’ll let my sisters and my cousins come to it.

The third step was really hard to dig out. A big piece of rock was broke but it is still a step. I see something else silver but it is hard to dig out with a spoon. I find little pieces of memories and take them to Mrs. Morrow. Just a broken glass, a piece of a plate. When I take her a piece she holds it to her heart, then she washes it off and puts in the window sill above her kitchen sink. She doesn’t say anything but even at just four I know she likes to get those pieces.

It took almost the whole summer, but all four steps are dug out. I am just four and there are four steps and I dug them all out. I sneak out with Momma’s broom and sweep them off. I tell Mrs. Morrow and she says the steps are stone not rocks and she sits in her rocker and stares out the window.

It got cold and I couldn’t stay outside much and I was afraid the steps would go away, but they stayed. They stayed until I was five and then until I was six. I fixed my little sisters a picnic of banana sandwiches, potato chips and peppermint and put the picnic in an old paper sack Momma had left from the store. I walked my sisters down the dirt road. I pushed the weeds back and they got to eat banana sandwiches at the Sunshine Club.

I learned a lot of things digging out those steps. Even if something is really, really hard, if you do a little bit of it every day you can do it. Sometimes big people don’t listen but some other big people will listen and when you give them old pieces of glass and broken plates you can make their eyes happy even if their face looks sad.

And what else I learned at four is if you are getting paid for worms then put worms, not dirt, in the round box.

Evangeline