What I See:
A child looking through a hole in a cardboard box
What I feel
Childhood fun, from an era before computers took over ... it would take a grandparent nowadays to bring this kind of fun to the table
If you are the custodial grandparents of seven young grandchildren, you can never miss an opportunity to create an affordable new enjoyment.
Capt. R.E. Ludlow's soda business was about to expand, and his veteran backers had paid for him to have a new carbonator that he was going to give to Sgt. Trent, the vice president of the budding Ludlow Bubbly Inc.
While the captain and his wife were getting the new carbonator out of the box, one of the levers punched a hole in the side of the box – the lever had been hastily wrapped, revealing the stress on manufacturing during the late spring of 2020. The machine was unharmed, however, and so were the captain and his wife.
This left the box, and Mrs. Ludlow saw her husband smile.
“I was rarely allowed to have found toys,” he said. “Doesn't go with being a proper blue-blood … but we are past all that foolishness now, and I certainly enjoyed the days in early childhood when my grandmother would let me be a kid with a box bigger than I was – and with a spy hole in it, too!”
“I'm thinking exactly what you are thinking, Robert.”
“Which is why I married you, Thalia.”
Two hours later, their seven grandchildren “discovered” a box in their back yard.
“Hey, look at this!” said nine-year-old George. “Two or three of us can get under this!”
Five-year-old Robert and six-year-old Grayson instantly wanted to test the theory and climbed in with George, and 10-year-old Andrew looked over the landscape, planning.
“It's got a hole in it, so we can see everything and nobody can see us!” Grayson said. “This is just what we need!”
“Gotta get it to the right spot, but cardboard is brown, and there's some green on it, so we just need to get it up the hill,” Andrew said. “Hey, Eleanor, can y'all do some green papier-mache so we can make it look more like a rock with stuff growing on it?”
11-year-old Eleanor, eight-year-old Edwina, and seven-year-old Amanda came and had a look at the box.
“Yep, we sure can,” Eleanor said. “Only one problem; rocks usually aren't that square, but we'll round off the edges with the papier-mache.”
Robert came out from under the box, and Amanda and Edwina went under.
“Oh, this is cool, George … the hole is at just the right height for all of us.”
“All we gotta do now,” George said, “is get it into the deep background up the hill, and we're going to be invincible in knowing everything going on around here. Our reconnaissance is going to be totally undefeated.”
“I think even Grandpa could fit in this if he knelt down, even though he is kinda tall,” Amanda said when she came out. “It would fit over his shoulders, easy, even though his shoulders are really broad.”
“You know what we're going to need from Grandpa?” Andrew said. “If we turn the box around, we can see everything happening above us on the mountain, but to see way up, we're gonna need a spyglass.”
“Okay, but, let's do one thing at a time,” Eleanor said. "We need to decide where we are going to put it, and then we need to round off the edges. After that, we can put it wherever we want it because it's light and it will fit in everywhere.”
“Gosh, we're going to be watching the people and the birds and the bees and the hawks and really see what they do because they don't know we're watching!” George said. “What we really need is a camera!”
“Got that,” Eleanor said, pulling out her phone.
“Oh, we are set for life!” Robert said.
“At least until it rains,” Amanda said, putting her little hand out to catch the first raindrop.
“Back porch!” Andrew said, and he and George picked up the box and brought it up onto the porch.
“Well, that's okay because we don't want people to really see what it really is until we get it ready,” Edwina said.
“Right, right – God is good and this is actually perfect timing,” Andrew said. “Let's go get some old newspaper to put under it, and then we can start working on camouflage.”
Days of purpose and happiness, thus created for seven children with a cardboard box!