Out in the Sandpile
THE EARLY YEARS
In the beginning, the game started in our actual sandpile, hence the name. My dad had made us a small sandbox, probably about 6'x6', with four big wooden planks set out in a square, filled about 6" deep with sand. The first two "characters" were Kitty Kiffeneigh (my guy), and John Chesney (Brandon's guy). We had toy horse trailers that we flipped upside down for our "houses." Aside from the fact that our cats loved to use the sandbox as their own personal litter box, leading us to make many "discoveries" while we were digging in the sand, we soon found the size limitations of the sandbox to be too stifling because we needed more LAND!!! It was a real estate BOOM! We realized there was a wealth of toys and junk laying around the farm that could be re-purposed for the miniature town we were now building. Thus, the game started spilling out of the sandbox and into the rest of the yard.
MONEY
The foundation of any good society is a system for buying, selling, or trading goods. As such, within our game, we came up with a monetary system which we thought seemed fair. Our old oven had been discarded behind the shop, and somehow or another, the glass window had been broken out. This broken glass had a very distinctive look, as the breaks were always perpendicular to the surface, so it was easy to distinguish it from any other pieces of broken glass. These pieces of glass became the standard denomination of money for the citizens of our "town," akin to dollar bills. Eventually, we realized we needed larger forms of currency, so blue glass pieces (from any source) were considered more closely related to $100 bills. I could be remembering wrong, but I think any other colored glass, such as green (from Mountain Dew bottles), brown (beer bottles), or any other shades, were considered more than the clear oven glass pieces, but less than the coveted blue pieces. Ultimately, triangular swather blades (simply referred to as "triangles") were employed as the "big money" - think $1000 or more. Somehow, it seemed Brandon ended up being the richest person in town as he seemed to know how to find the most "triangles" and he also didn't have any issues with ripping others off or flat out stealing!
BUILDING MATERIALS
When it came to building our houses, schools, stores, roads, and infrastructure, nothing was really off limits, although in general, things had to be at least sort of proportionate relative to everything else. Houses were generally about 6" tall and the walls were most commonly made out of bricks, with open roofs so we could access the people and things placed inside. I'm not sure where the bricks came from, but most of them were limestone and were about 3" thick, 4" high and 8" long. At some point, we found or came across some red bricks, like you see in red brick houses, and those were much nicer as they were not as thick and were all uniform size, unlike the limestone ones. One summer, our house was re-shingled, and the old wooden shingles provided a construction boom! They were the perfect materials because all you had to do was hammer the thin end into the ground, then you had a wall that was much more appropriately scaled, being about 1/4" thick and could be anywhere from 5-8" tall. In addition, things like corrugated tin, scrap metal, old dollhouses and toys were used for creating structures.
Inside, the houses were decorated with carpet scraps and towels, furniture, and whatever we could find to make them look more homey. GI Joe guys, army guys, barbies, little people, and various other types of dolls and figurines all lived happily together in their homes, with their families. Nevermind that a 12" tall barbie doll may be married to a 3" tall army guy.
We made roads by using a hoe and scraping the dirt and weeds away. I don't think we got fancy enough to have sidewalks or anything like that.
ALANNAHVILLE
The 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics was a huge influence on me, and for a brief time, I really wanted to grow up and be a figure skater! My siblings also shared at least some of my enthusiasm for ice skating, and as a result, my very thoughtful father decided to build us our own skating rink in the backyard. After the winter, the rink no longer had much use until we realized the sides were sort of like "mountains" for our little people, so we started building things on and around them. Eventually, this lead to the creation of the town of Alannahville, showing my obsession with the Thompson Twins and its female member, Alannah Currie. This was the biggest "town" ever created in Out in the Sandpile, and the most long-lasting. It had a school, stores, a post office, a "rock garden" (where rock concerts were held) and several elaborate houses. My main house, which I dubbed "the rich house" was here and was probably my crowning achievement. I built it using old shingles, and since it was on a "hill" it had multiple levels rising up the side of the hill.
SHILLING HILL
Perched on the east end of the ruins of the skating rink, Shilling Hill was named after an air force base outside Salina, Kansas. As a result, it also had an air force base, as well as a shopping mall and/or hotel. The thing I remember most about Shilling Hill was that this is where I discovered I could use the leftover NEW shingles from our roof, which were the modern asphalt variety. Although they obviously couldn't be hammered into the ground like the old wooden ones, I could simply use smaller pieces of the wooden shingles as braces to hold up the asphalt shingles. This led to a much "cheaper" looking structure but would do in a pinch. And I always felt the need to keep building, building, building!
LAKESIDE
Kind of gross to look back now and realize this, but the most "exclusive" and "rich" neighborhood, dubbed Lakeside, was the result of a sinkhole created by the installation of our family's new septic tank. Regardless of how the "lake" was created, this was a great place to build homes because we could pretend to be rich people living next to a lake (even though there was no water in the lake, it was just a hole in the ground). I was very proud of my lake house, which was built from bricks and wood, and had a "basement" dug under the house for more living area. Brandon used an old fancy shelf for the facade of his house there. No offense to Adrienne, but I don't really remember much about any of her houses because she was probably too young to really get into it that much. I was pretty hard on her, always forcing her to play this game that she probably had little to no interest in.
KING BEE
The name of this town came from a movie that I've never been able to find. It was something I watched on TV, but even Google can't seem to find it. Anyway, this town was located behind our garage, and it was notable for having "really hard dirt," so the basements of the houses were very shallow. Beetlejuice lived here (a plastic toy I had bought on clearance sale at Wal-Mart) as well as Kendra, an unfortunate bald barbie doll who came with her own wig.
There were other "towns," and even a satellite version of the game hastily thrown together on my grandparents farm, but those are the towns I remember most, mainly because they were captured in a home video that I still have.
SUMMARY
My brother Brandon accurately described "Out in the Sandpile" as sort of a real-life "Sim City." It was a great outlet for my imagination and my interest in architecture and urban planning, which has actually helped in my career working for Business Improvement Districts. I'd like to think that "Out in the Sandpile" helped establish my foundation and interest in cities and how they are planned, managed, and maintained. I loved laying out streets, designing and building houses, but even more so I loved imagining the lives of the people who lived out in the sandpile. They had jobs, personalities, interests, and loves; they seemed almost real to me. I probably would have kept playing, despite realizing when I was 13 that I was probably too old to be playing with dolls in the dirt in my backyard, but we ended up moving to the "city" right before my freshman year in high school, so that was the end of that. To this day, if you look around the dirt and weeds outside our farm house, you just might be able to find the ruins of a civilization called Out in the Sandpile.
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