Where Did My Sandbox Go?

When I was a kid we played in the dirt. Not with a Nintendo. Not with an Xbox. Not with anything that needed a controller or a power outlet. When I was a kid, we played outside. Out in the sand. In a thing called a sandbox. It was a box specifically designed to hold sand. Which it did. And then you as a child would sit in the sand and play in there.

You could play with the basic pail and shovel. Especially, on the damp days. That was a good way to go. You could pack some wet sand in a pail or some mold you would have and you could make little sand structures. Sort of like making a sandcastle on a beach but not anywhere near as nice. But you deal with what you have. And most days that was the sandbox.

My friend, Dave, had the top sandbox in the neighborhood. It was made from some kind of wooden beams and there was like two feet of white sand in there. My sandbox was ok but consisted of a tractor tire with some yellower sand that my dad got from the sandstone alongside the road and you couldn't play in it when it was wet because you would turn orange. But other than that it was on ok sandbox. Except under the tire parts, spiders would build houses and I didn't really like that. So we played at Dave's a lot.

Dave and I also collected quite a few trucks, mainly Tonka because really that is the only way to go with cast iron replica constructionware. I had a bulldozer and a dirt hauler. Dave had the firetruck. Not just the one with the ladder but one with a functional siren and working fire hose. We had medium sized trucks that we played with at one end of Dave's monster sandbox and with the more miniature trucks on the other side where we would do detailed dirt piling and hole digging.

I don't see a lot of the kids today playing in the dirt and they should. The sandbox needs to be reinvented. I recommend the big sandbox with white sand like Dave had. Or even the tractor tire sandbox, just maybe with some nice sand. Like the kind you can get at Walmart and Menard's even. You don't have to go to Peru or Asia or wherever else show off Dave's dad got his sand. So go make a sandbox in your back yard this spring and let your kids play the old fashioned way. In the dirt. It's way cheaper than a Nintendo.