the gathering

Writing yesterday about moats and castles reminded me of a certain beach vacation we took in 2002. My husband had gathered all the kids in the area and decided to take on the monumental task of making the best sand castle ever. Those kids dug all...day...long, retrieved countless buckets of sea water and even posted a guard when construction halted for break time. What you see here is the front wall and a toe headed Jack peeking out over the top.
This was how impressive it was from behind! The walls being the simple part, those boys dug a hole to China and by the time they were done, they could all stand inside and be completely hidden. Everyone passing by that day stopped to admire their handy work, my husband giving the boys all of the credit. It took the entire day and I bet many of the parents enjoyed the free babysitting :)
Here was the hard part and a lesson in being a responsible human being... Before dark, my husband told the boys that the Castle Fort had to be torn apart and filled in, lest anyone night walking might fall in and get hurt. That lecture was met with great resistance and a lot of moans and groans, but in the end they all agreed to doing the right thing.

The next day, all the same boys got together and decided to start a new Castle Fort. The digging began and they all petered out in less than an hour...

...this time, the fore thought of knowing that they would respectively have to destroy all of their hard work took the Umph out of this day's project.

I often think about that sunny long day, the hard lesson learned and wonder if any of those boys would go on to be the "initiator's" of other Castle Forts...saving the moral until the end of the hard days work...of course ;)