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A potpourri of stories about various family members or events

Need Something To Do?

David in sandbox
David in sandbox (compliments of Daniel)

Consider the photo of David above. Two days ago, he was playing in his sandbox, and he decided to move all the sand from the right side to the left (or as much as he could transfer). This reminded me of something that my grandpa Jesse Hibbard often said.

If grandpa thought that we were perhaps not fully occupied (but more often he would say this in jest), he would ask if we "needed something to do?". When we asked what it was he wanted, he would suggest that we get a pail and a shovel. Then we were instructed to start in his farmyard and dig a hole, putting the dirt from the hole into the bucket. Then we were to move a few paces toward the river and dig another hole, and place the dirt from the second hole into the first hole to fill it. Then proceed to a third location a few steps closer in the direction of the river and repeat by using the dirt from the third to fill the second. Then we were to keep repeating this until we got to the river. At that point, on the last hole, fill the last hole with the dirt in the pail that we had been carrying.

Today, David and I played in the sandbox together again since it was a little rainy, and we had a canopy over us when using the sandbox. David would take the scoop and dig from the bottom portion of the left side and dump it into the top portion of the same side. I would then take the rake and level it off, providing him with replacement sand. Repeat and rinse. A few times, he tried to hurry and get ahead of me, but he never commented or asked me to stop. In fact, once when I was slacking off, he told me to rake down the pile.

Published 2021-03-11. Revised 2025-07-02.

If you find any error(s) in the text, please let me know. Thanks. Contact me with errors or comments using hibbardac@gmail. [Back to the top] [About the author, Al]

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