How can a slough, cut through the edge of several lawns to a shelf of limestone, be a playground?
In the 1100 block of Mulberry Street in Humboldt was one — and still is, reports Jan Coy-kendall, whose grandkids have found “the ditch” — which it came to be known in the 1950s — a favorite place to play.
I revisited the other day, and while some features have changed, it was easy to visualize cavorting from one end to the other hunting crawdads. A prize was a momma with a bunch of tiny babies clinging to the underside of her tail.
A couple of conspicuous gouges near where I lived held water all summer, unless drought became pronounced.
Occasionally a turtle showed up, apparently making a pilgrimage, and once or twice I spotted a small water snake slithering along. I never messed with either reptile; turtles didn’t interest me, and I’ve always been a little leery of snakes.
When the water flowed, I’d build earthen dams to back up enough to create small reservoirs. That was especially fun around the Fourth of July.
In those halcyon days, firecrackers that nearly rivaled the explosive power of a small portion of dynamite were legal in Kansas. My favorites were cherry bombs and bulldogs, also known as M-80s.
If there was enough water in the ditch, first inclination of my friends and I was to wrap a cherry bomb in mud, and, with fuse lit, drop it into a few inches of water. For whatever reason, water didn’t extinguish the fuse and when they went off water flew everywhere. Any crawdads hiding nearby probably spent the rest of their lives with severe cases of tinnitus.
In addition to using the big firecrackers as depth charge, we envisioned them as artillery shells, flung at small boats we built from the wooden sides of produce crates. The crates came every week to Ace Sterling’s grocery on Bridge Street and he’d give them to kids to construct toy boats and other vehicles. Thicker pieces of framing became great rubber-band guns, when a clothes pin was attached.
The most fun was when heavy rain came near the Fourth and our little boats bounced along in the rushing water. We’d launch the water-proof firecrackers, occasionally leaving the boats a mass of splinters, and making us, we thought, quite the experts.
I guess kids still do something like that today, but I doubt if it’s nearly as much fun on a digital screen.
Ode to street ditch
