Water in the Sandpile (Part 1 of 2)

I heard my three year old daughter, Valerie, turn on the water outside the other day. With the sound of the gushing water I had a flood of memories come back to me... about... water.

It’s fun to play with water. You can get the garden hose, turn the water on full blast and then poke it down into the ground either on the grass or in the dirt, it doesn’t matter. The force of the water will automatically dig a hole for you -- if you push on the hose. It will go deeper and deeper until you hit a rock or something and even then you can even get past that if you work at it.
Or, you can test your roof or rain gutter system. Just put the hose up there and turn it on. If you want some real water fun, just connect the hose to a lawn aerator, or any other garden water tool that has a small opening or nozzle. Once I propped the aerator up so it would shoot a stream of water all the way across the backyard, or over the house and out into the street.
But fun as these may be, the best activity of all was water in the sandpile.
Our sandpile was ten feet long and six feet wide and lined with
cinder blocks. It was about a foot deep in most places and a foot and
a half in others. It was filled with sand and if it ever ran low my dad
made sure we got more. Occasionally a dump truck came and dumped
a huge pile of sand on our driveway, then we had fun shoveling and
hauling loads of sand in the wheel barrel.
While other kids my age had a sand box, I had a sandpile! It was the best in the whole neighborhood so we often had ten or fifteen kids playing in it at one time.
The funnest times for me were when I played all by myself. I made cities, towns, buildings, mountains, and fields. But it was no fun to play in a sandpile with dry, hot sand. Of course, a little water could change all that.
I would usually have to walk clear over to the tap, uncoil the hose, turn on the water, and walk clear over to the sandpile. It was a distance of about twenty-five feet, but it was darn well worth it! When I saw what it did to the parched sand I was amazed. The worthless, dry sand was suddenly transformed into something I could mold, shape, and construct with. It was also fun to make little lakes and ponds for my sand cities.