Armchair Genealogy

By Melinda Cohenour

As I was researching family history this month and receiving such joy reading stories shared about old home places or memories that made these relatives "come to life" as real people, it occurred to me I had many wonderful memories of my own childhood I could share. Thus, I offer the story of The Clubhouse and The Ant Colony.

A story headline I recently received about a child or children being saved from a collapsed hole they had dug in damp dirt reminded me of the "clubhouse" my cousin Gayle Arthur Joslin and neighbor and I "built" in the field between our houses. We dug a hole - big enough for 5-6 little kids to get into, pulled a rusty old sheet of corrugated roofing tin over the top, got some broken panes of glass and took down inside with us (to block off the tunnels of the red ant bed we'd accidentally abutted). We then proceeded to put an old rubber tire balanced on the tin "roof" and a couple of rotted boards for our entry point. Then we covered the tin and all with all the dirt we'd dug out - a coffin waiting for the cave-in, for sure.

For the few days we managed to meet in our little clubhouse, we took in flashlights - and the most educational part of it was viewing the underground activities of the ants. Remarkable - that part.

The ants had separate little circular rooms set aside for distinct purposes. The seed heads, grass seeds, plant seeds, Chinese Elm seeds, etc. that they hauled tirelessly into the anthill ended up very carefully sorted by type of seed, one room reserved for the Chinese Elm seeds, one for the grass seeds, one for the goathead sticker burs, etc.

There was also a nursery and, amazingly, the attendant "nurses" were WHITE (they never went above-ground, apparently). We had accidentally caved in part of the ant tunnels at first, but they worked diligently to rebuild their storage rooms and, fortunately for us, built them with one side open to the glass. I know now that the whole clubhouse was a potential death-trap, but at the time it was a truly exciting adventure.