The Troop by Gayne C. Young

Author:Gayne C. Young [Young, Gayne C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Six Continents Communication, LLC
Published: 2019-12-02T07:00:00+00:00

38

I never would have thought in a million years that I’d be making mud bricks in the high desert for summer camp.

But then I guess I never would’ve thought that the US would go dark following some kind of military attack either.

Go figure.

Making adobe bricks was a lot more involved than I thought it’d be. The first thing we did was make the forms. We did this by splitting some cedar staves in half then tying them together into a rectangle with the flat sides facing inwards. We made eight molds, but Johnny said we’d be making more in the days to come.

We carried our forms and two shovels, two machetes, and a bucket down to the creek across from camp. The water there was barely ankle deep for most of the creek but there was a small pool maybe five foot by ten foot that was almost knee deep.

“We’re gonna build our dam right here,” Johnny said gesturing to the front of the pool. “And if we do it right, it should back up quite a bit.”

“How far back is that,” Andrew asked looking up the creek bed.

“That depends,” Johnny replied. “Depends on how high we build the dam but to build the dam we first have to make lots and lots of bricks.”

“Lots and lots?” Andrew asked looking for an explanation as to how many that was. “Is that more than quite a bit? How many is lots and lots?”

“Lots and lots,” Johnny repeated with a huge smile on his face. “Lots and lots.”

“Like the Great Wall of China lots and lots?” Liam joked.

“Lots and lots,” Johnny repeated again. “Lots and lots.”

We followed along as Johnny showed us how to make the bricks. We dug shovel full after shovel full of mud and dirt on the bank into a pile. We watered the pile down with creek water then covered it with straw and grass that we’d cut with the machetes. Andrew and Jack were chosen as the ones to knead the material, which meant that they took their boots and socks off then stomped the vegetation into the mud. After they did this for a while Carl and Matt folded the mixture with their shovels. Then Andrew and Jack would knead it some more. Once the mixture was thick and felt kind’a like clay, we shoveled it into the forms. We scraped the top of the mud bricks flat and level with the mold then pulled the mold free from the newly formed bricks.

“OK!” Johnny exclaimed. “If we got the consistency right, which I think we did, we should have some fully dried bricks in a day or two.”

“Yeah but I guess eight bricks isn’t lots and lots,” Andrew theorized.

“No,” Johnny replied. “So, let’s get busy on round two cuz I want to get at least 32 bricks on the ground and drying before we break for the day.”

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