2007 Essay Contest Fourth Place Winner

DIRT DIGGER

Submitted by Betty J. Foster of ElDorado

The year was 1935. I was about four or five years old and was really happy.
My mama had given me a tablespoon and said I could go out and dig in the dire. This was a really fun thing to do. It was a warm, sunshiny day. Birds were singing in the trees. We had a fairly big yard and some shade. I was barefoot and loved to feel the soft earth oozing up between my toes. I sat down on the ground and began digging and now my fingers were in the soil and it was mushy and cool. After digging a while I felt the spoon hit something like metal. I really got excited and began digging faster. Then I reached down and pulled out a small piece of metal, cleaned it. I had found a buffalo head nickel.

I ran to my mama and she told me she thought we had time to go to the picture show if we hurried. She cleaned me up and we walked really fast. At this time, children under 6 years could get in for nothing with an adult. The price was a nickel for an adult till 6:00 p.m.

We got there and it was 6:05 p.m. The lady who sold tickets was very nice and I could tell she didn’t like to do it, but said she could not let us in since the price had gone up to 10 cents. My mama took the news really well and was still in a good mood.

On the way home we talked about ways to spend the nickel. For five cents you could get a big candy bar, a bag of small candy or a Coca Cola which came in a green glass bottle and only contained 8 ounces. We could each have a half. We had gotten pretty warm on the walk so we decided on the coke. We lived just behind a Drive-In Café and my father worked there. We measured halfway down the bottle and I waited till she drank the first half and then I drank mine.
This might seem like a small think to remember as a favorite event, but my mama had what we thought at the time was just an ongoing problem being nervous. When I was about 20 we found out that she was a paranoid schizophrenic. Times when she was doing well were good times and there weren’t many of them. She not only stayed happy about the coin, but helped me to forget about missing the picture show by telling me all the tings we could still get.