Dirt-Clod Wars

Our neighbors to the north were the Stahles. When we were young, my family's best friends were Stahles. Noel, who was my age, remained my best friend through college. My experience with dirt-clods involves Noel, his yard, and his family.

The Stahle's yard was unlike other yards in the neighborhood. Although the front was grassed the backyard was treated more like an orchard. In fact, the Stahle's grandparents owned a small orchard on Orchard Drive in Bountiful where they grew apples. The Stahle's backyard orchard had trees but only along the western fence line. The side yard adjacent to our property was void of trees, but they maintained the ground like they did the rest of the orchard. That is, they plowed or tilled the ground to keep the weeds under control. This freshly broken ground provided us a limitless supply of dirt-clods and an open area when they could be thrown without concern for collateral damage.

For those who don't know, a dirt-clod is nothing more than a hardened mass of dirt. You could think of them as soft rocks. In fact, a clod might have a good sized rock within it. That is why dirt-clod wars were so exciting. Getting hit with a dirt-clod meant that you would experience just enough pain to keep your interest but not so much as to cause permanently damage.

As I remember, we would gather in the Stahle's side yard and begin our war. There were bushes and overgrowth along the property line that we could use for defense, but the bravest warriors would stand in the open field. When we were fighting older boys I remember wearing winter coats or other heavy clothing to help soften the blows, but the real fun came from selecting and throwing clods at the enemy (which included anyone within throwing distance).

We tried to keep the spent clods off the grassy area to the east, but in the heat of battle clods would end-up there too. We also tried to avoid hitting each others heads, which we were able to do most of the time. A well-chosen clod would break-apart on impact and make a puff of what looked like smoke. I imagined our clods as small exploding munitions.

We usually played until someone got hurt. That is how most wars ended. By hurt I mean someone would get hit hard enough to start crying. If the crying was minimal, we would just stop throwing at each other and move on to the next activity. But when the crying was significant, we would run home in hopes of not getting into trouble.