Memory Lane Monday: Sod & Rocks

It's been a while since I've wandered down memory lane but I wanted to get back in the habit...so here it goes.

This memory came to mind after a lesson in church today.  It was all about the importance of work.  As others in the room shared funny/heartwarming experiences my mind wandered back to my younger years.  My parents definitely taught us the value of work.  I remember when we re-did the backyard at our house in Pleasant View.  My dad tilled up the current backyard grass (I don't remember why...maybe we put in a sprinkler system?  Maybe it wasn't even?  Maybe my dad just wanted to?)  and we as kids were responsible for picking up rocks out of the dirt.  The land where our house was built was on foothills of a major mountain and so the ground was naturally rocky.  Each day we EACH had to fill up a 5 gallon bucket with rocks.  There were four of us and this was our job for a few weeks.  Do the math...that's A LOT of rocks.  (Although in the last couple years I learned that my brothers sometimes CHEATED.  They would go behind my dad's shop and scoop up gravel from there, fill their buckets and then show dad they were done.) 

After the back yard dirt patch was sufficiently de-rocked we went about the task of getting the grass.  Now there is something you must know about my dad.  He is cheap.  Ok, not cheap...frugal.  VERY frugal.  He heard that his Alma Mater was tearing up their football field and somehow got the deal that if he cut the sod himself he could take the grass for free.  So one Saturday morning he loaded up the four of us, a couple of family friends and one of his brothers and hauled us to the field to cut and load the sod.  I should mention that he used one of these (because it was cheaper to rent than a motorized one...but I shouldn't complain.  It was better than using shovels...which we also tried) to cut the sod:

We would roll the strips as they were cut and then put them on the trailer.  Ya.  It was like a labor camp (did I mention I was a teenager?).  At the same time these strips were being cut other people were chopping out hunks of sod with shovels.  Once we had enough cut we headed back up to the house and the real fun began.  The rolls were easy...we just stuck them in place and rolled them back out.  The hacked up pieces were trickier...it was like a giant sod jigsaw puzzle.

At the time I was mad at having seemingly the ONLY parents in the WORLD who made their kids do slave labor(doesn't every kid think that?).  But now that I'm grown I see the value in the work we did.  When Nathan and I owned our house in Logan and put down some sod there...I knew what to do because of my previous sod laying experience.  It's also nice to sit around with my brothers now and joke about picking up rocks.  Work really brought our family closer.