This “Scene from Childhood” took place in Salt Lake City, Utah in the late ‘20s

The dugout was finished – a hole in the ground, dug out by hard and tedious labor. It measured 5 feet deep, and 4 x 4 feet around with the roof supported by old 2 x 4’s or whatever we could scrounge. Corrugated tin comprised the roof covered with dirt from the hole. It even had a fireplace.

This was our hideout, a place to plan our nefarious deeds of the day.

About a block away, Mr. Heath had this large farm of maybe a couple of acres, where he grew beautiful potatoes and carrots, among other produce. We would sneak in through the enclosure, duck under the barbed wire, and crawl to our objective. The furrows between the rows provided the perfect cover. God help you if you were ever discovered, because it was a well-known fact, Old Man Heath had a powerful salt and pepper shotgun. Of course, none of us had ever seen this weapon, but by gosh, he must have owned it.

Heath’s carrots were our favorite. You could easily pull them out of the ground, stuff them in the bib of your coveralls, crawl back through the fence, and run to the safety of the dugout.

The reward for all this effort was to clean off some of the soil with our hands, rub off the rest on our coveralls, and munch away on these farm fresh goodies, never giving a thought to what Heath used for fertilizer.

Then something happened to end this idyllic existence, over which we had no control – We Grew Up!

Ernie Mednick of Bellevue was a watchmaker. He submitted this “Scene” from his childhood in 2005.

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