One story our grandchildren found so hard to imagine about their grandmother, Zena, happened when she was only about three. Her Aunt Elsie had stopped by with little cousin, Thelma, who was also about three. Little Elsie was dressed in her finest: white dress and white bloomers. The works. Aunt Elsie wanted Zena and her mother to go along with her to pay a visit on another relative who was “ailin’.” In short order, Esther dressed  Zena in her “Sunday best”, too.

 

Well…something delayed the mothers in leaving, giving the girls just enough time to head for their play area in the back yard. Promptly, they decided to make a batch of mud pies.

 

Zena had a pretend room with pretend furniture. The table was an orange crate. The chairs were blocks of stove wood. The pie pans were Mason fruit jar lids. An old abandoned galvanized pan served as a mixing bowl.

 

After stirring up dirt and water, they ladled it into the can lids with an old spoon that had somehow found its way out of the kitchen. Kernels of corn from the corn crib were poked into the mud pies around the outer edge, kind of sideways, making it look sort of like the way their moms always pinched the crust around the edges of the pies they baked.

 

Along about this time, their Mothers were ready to leave, and came looking for the two girls. You can probably guess…Both were covered with mud! Aunt Elsie caught Thelma and gave her a rare thrashing. Rare—because Thelma seldom did anything that required such punishment.

 

Zena ran for the windmill where she tried to wash the mud off her white dress in the horse tank. She wasn’t very successful. Now, her dress was dirty all over. So, she got a whalin’, too. The grandkids found that hilarious---Grandma getting a spanking!

 

I tried to tell them, “Boys make mud pies, too.” In unison, Steve and Ted said, “nuh-uhh” or something like that. It means, “No, they don’t.” What they meant was, they had never made mud pies. Truth is, with a swing set, bikes, toys and games, not to mention television to keep them occupied, they didn’t need to make mud pies. And they had each other. My brother nearest me in age was Wayne. He was three years older than I, and as far as I know, never made a mud pie in his life.

 

There’s no two ways about it, I took my pie baking seriously. The pump and well couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from the house, so getting water was no problem. The garden was about the same distance on the other side of the house. No problem getting plenty of good rich dirt to make mud. Mother had given me a one quart aluminum pan, with a handle. It didn’t set level on the stove, so she had given it to me. This made a good container to mix the dirt and water in. Now, I never thought of putting the pies in can lids. Instead, I just patted them out flat in my hand and laid them on a board to dry. They looked more like mud cookies. But I called them pies.

 

Dad was watching me one day and said, “Why don’t you put some eggs in your batter? Then, when they dry, put frosting on them and call them cakes?” He was poking fun at me because he thought I was being a sissy. Well, like any good cook, I tried to improve. So, instead of discouraging me, he gave me an idea.

 

There was a lot of sand in the gravel on the road in front of our house. I managed to fill the quart pan with sand and brought it back to my “kitchen.” There were some small stones in it, so I asked Mom if I could borrow her sieve. “No!” was her firm answer. However, when I told her what I wanted it for, she found me a piece of window screen. It worked fine. Aren’t mom’s great? In no time I had a nice pile of almost white sifted “flour”, which I mixed with my “batter.”

 

Eggs…yes, eggs! Good idea. But…Mom would skin me alive if I took a chicken egg. I know…sparrow eggs! We had lots of sparrows in the barn. All I had to do was get up on top of the cow stanchions to reach their nests. Success! There were plenty of eggs. Dad said we had way too many sparrows and pigeons in our barn...If I took some of the eggs it would help lessen the bird population, I reasoned.

 

I remember putting the eggs in my pocket as I gathered them. Not a good idea. My mother didn’t like it much, either. After she cleaned the smashed eggs out of my pocket, she gave me an old tin cup for gathering them in. It worked fine. Smart mom. The older I got, the smarter she got. So then, I broke at least six speckled sparrow eggs into the batter to make one pie.  Mixing some of the sand in caused the batter to be a lighter color, too.

 

After the sun had dried the cookie-like mud pies real good, I sprinkled some sand on top of them, making them almost white. Uncle Marion would have said, “By Golly Ned! They look just like sugar cookies.” And they did.

 

Recently, I told this story to my brother-in-law, Virgil Hayes. He said, “I never made any mud pies, but I did rob bird nests for a while. Got cured of it, though.”

 

“How was that?” I asked.

 

“Stuck my hand in a nest one time, and pulled out a big bull snake.”

 

That would have cured me, too.