By Rick Ryckeley
Fayette County Fire & Emergency Services

All kids love dirt, and growing up in the South we were no exception. We rolled around in it, dug many a cave in it, had the great dirt-clod battle of '76 with it, and some of us even ate it, but Mom hated it.

My three brothers and I would start a typical summer's day with clean clothes, and by the time Mom rang the dinner bell we'd be covered from head to toe with fine Georgia red clay. For us kids, this was great; for the laundry lady this was not so great. Mom was the laundry lady.

The laundry lady didn't like it much when we went digging in the dirt, and it seemed one of us was always digging. Next to Neighbor Thomas' house was a vacant lot. The lot had been deemed unbuildable by the city, so it was left it in its undisturbed, natural state. That is, until we moved in two houses down.

A short walk into the woods, and the vacant lot dropped off sharply to form a 30-foot cliff. Older Brother Richard, Big Brother James, Twin Brother Mark and Yours Truly spent many a summer digging in the side of that cliff. By the end of the third summer, all of the digging had paid off, we finally finished "Cliff Condos," where no girls were allowed.

From the beginning, Cliff Condos was a large undertaking even with us four boys enlisting help from Neighbor Thomas and Down-the-Street-Bully Brad. At the start of the first summer we had cleared the area at the bottom of the cliff and set up our tents for a base camp. Armed with a hand spade, three green army shovels, and a pick, we dug hand and foot holds into the base of the cliff wall.

Every two feet we dug holes 'til we were able to climb up the face of the cliff about fifteen feet then we started to dig the first of five caves. Digging with our green army shovels and picks, we threw the dirt behind us and let it fall next to the base camp below.

Like any construction project, the work on Cliff Condos had its share of delays due to rain, summer camps and dirt clod fights, but by the end of the first summer we had two rooms completed, and a large mound of dirt at the base of the cliff. All that dirt is what saved Big Brother James' life.

It was our last week of digging before school started back when it happened. Down-the-Street-Bully Brad pushed Big Brother James off the top of Cliff Condos! Right after the lunch break they had gone to the top of the cliff to survey the location for the great room expansion when it happened. They started to argue and soon were fighting and rolling around. Now this was not an unusual development when Big Brother James and Down-the-Street-Bully Brad got together, but what happened next was. Brad said he tripped, James said he was thrown, but in either case the next thing we saw was Big Brother James flying off the top of the 30-foot cliff and landing in the large pile of discarded dirt down below!

Nice soft dirt. Big Brother James was unhurt and we all now had a new game to play!

The rest of that week not much work was done on Cliff Condos we spent the time jumping and doing flips off the cliff into the nice soft dirt below. This, of course, got us dirty from head to toe, which was okay with all of us, but not so okay with the laundry lady.

The laundry lady could not understand how we got so dirty that last week of summer. "Are y'all just rolling around in the dirt just to get dirty?" she asked.

"No, mama," I said, "we're jumping off the top of Cliff Condos." She just looked at me with a confused look and shook her head.

Thinking back, seems like Mom did that a lot while I was growing up. That's the year the laundry lady got a new washer and dryer. Come to find out, making bricks out of Georgia red clay isn't the only thing it's good for. Mom said, "Georgia red clay sure can tear up a washing machine."

The Wife wants a new washer and dryer, top of the line, front loading at a cost of $2,000. I just looked at her with a confused look, shook my head and walked away mumbling something about termites. Then I went and told The Boy to stop digging in the dirt. He's gonna cost me a fortune before he leaves for college.

[Rick Ryckeley is employed by the Fayette County Department of Fire and Emergency Services. He can be reached at saferick@bellsouth.net.]

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