Recently, I undertook the task of sorting through a box of photographs, all black and white I might add, that spanned a lot of family history from my family. There were numerous photos of dad while serving in the Navy, poses of mom with us kids whether it was all three or as we joined the family. They also include those moments and memories when dad captured the antics created by us kids. While sorting and fingering these precious  memories I came across one that brought a big smile to my face and a chuckle in my throat. I found myself looking at myself, a photo taken in July 1957; I was four years old,  sitting on my tri- cycle wearing a metal sand bucket on my head. Standing next to me with a very serious look of scorn or sadness is Katie, my little playmate. She lived next door to us and was the youngest in her family.

We are both wearing warm coats so the weather must have been chilly that day. Not only am I wearing a bucket on my  head, but there’s another one swinging from the handlebars of the bike. Maybe that’s why Katie is sad? Did I not share the other bucket with her? Where’s her bike? Did we take turns riding the one that is shown in the picture? Though I don’t have the answers to these questions I can clearly recall that getting the handle of the bucket down below my chin was a tricky feat. The sturdy handle didn’t “give” way for the snug fit created by this original “look”, my little fingers tugging at it until I got it positioned under my small chin.

Katie and I were pretty tight. She had a hard time pronouncing my name, Susan or Susie, so hers came out as “tooey”….a nickname that stuck with me in the neighborhood and even mom who stretched it to “tooey pie” as a term of endearment. Because both Katie and I were the babies of our families, we often played by ourselves as our older siblings went off to other adventures that didn’t include two little sisters getting in the way. But this didn’t mean we weren’t capable of dreaming up our own shenanigans. Enter a new car and a big mud puddle.

It had rained during the night and a big wonderful mud puddle was formed next to the driveway at Katie’s house. She had an uncle who visited one day, driving his new car for all of her family to come out and admire. It was yellow, about the shade of a creamy homemade lemon pie. And it was parked right next to that mud puddle. At first it was fun to make mud pies with our tiny hands, patting them out flat as we flipped them back and forth between our palms, feeling the wet gooey dirt between our fingers. As much enjoyment and fun we got from forming and squishing the pies, our attention turned to the car and we had a lightbulb moment. What if our pies would stick to something? We carefully planted a pie on the side of the car and voila!–it not only stuck, it stayed in place and in a short while dried a bit, all the while staying in place on the car door and fender as we continued our mud pie display. We were SO proud of our artwork that we didn’t notice when the front door opened and her uncle appeared on the scene. I wish I could remember if he was angry, laughed, or reacted some other way but I don’t. All I can recall is that he asked us “what did you do!” Being the sweet little girls that we were we gave the only rational answer possible…”nothing”. Never mind that our hands, pant legs, and sleeves were covered in the undeniable evidence left from mud pie making turned into displays of art on a ready canvas. Never mind that as the pies dried out even longer, they eventually fell off the car leaving a faint circle outline on that beautiful creamy yellow backdrop.

I’m pretty sure we weren’t punished other than a verbal scolding. Katie’s uncle was left to the task of washing his car and at day’s end our mother’s would put us in a tub to soak away the mischief of the afternoon. It’s a great memory, but unlike wearing a bucket on my head, there’s no photo of the mud pie art display, only faltering details of a new car, a mud puddle and glorious opportunity with a partner in crime.