Rich Black Dirt

A friend mentioned to me this morning that when she was a child she loved to play outside on rainy days, listening to the sounds and making up stories.  It reminded me that I loved to play in the very black dirt at the back of my grandparents yard, which reminded me of the rich black dirt I found at our first home after we were graduated from college.

This was a parsonage, a rented house in Millertown which was near Indian Head and our mailing address was Normalville.  It had six rooms and a path.  The church rented it from, who else, the Millers, -Chester and Minnie.  After we moved in, my husband asked Chester to teach him how to keep the coal furnace going in the winter.  Chester said he'd send Minnie over to teach me because that was Minnie's job.  She taught Marlin and in our home, it was his job, --unless he was away for several hours.

But I digress.  In the summer, I found this rich black soil beside the outbuilding at the end of "the path."  I thought it would be very fertile and I planted some seeds in it.  But nothing every grew.  It wasn't till about a month later that I was told that what I thought was rich black dirt was actually soot!  The chimeny had been cleaned and the soot had been dumped there at the edge of the property by the outhouse.  Rich black soil, indeed!

Posted by: NJ on 7/24/2004 8:32:28 PM , 1 comments