The Secret Masonic Code

Dad and I were out fishing at our favorite spot. We were both sitting on top of a clod of dirt covering the roots of a massive tree that had fallen and uprooted. It started to rain, sprinkling at first, then drizzling, and then the deluge hit. Intrepid outdoorsmen that we were, Dad thought it would be best if we called things off. "I think we could stand a little rain," he said, "but if we catch any, we don't want those poor fish to get wet."

With that, we packed up our gear. Dad stood up to get down off our perch, which by now had become muddy and slick. A mountain goat couldn't have held his footing on that slime and Dad went down, sliding through the mud and landing with both feet in the lake. Trying not to laugh too much, I decided to try a more graceful approach to getting down. I grabbed a series of roots that were sticking out and slid down the mudball. We washed off as much mud as we could using the "clean" lake water, then got into our car and headed home.

In the course of our traumatic ordeal we had worked up an appetite, so we decided to stop for lunch. After our lake water mud bath, we figured it wasn't a good idea to go inside a diner, so Dad stopped at a place that had curb service.

I had the short attention span of most kids that age – I was about ten – and as we were waiting for our order, I got bored and decided to do a little exploring. I flipped open the glove compartment and saw a book. The cover said something about "Masonic Ceremonies." I pulled it out and started to examine it.

How cool – everything was written in code!

I settled on a page and studied it. Then I realized I could kind of make out what the coded words said… so I started to read out loud.

Dad whipped around and looked at me, "What are you doing?"

I beamed with pride, "I'm reading this secret book."

Dad grabbed the secret treasure from me, "You're not supposed to see that."

We sat in silence. Dad stared at the page I had been reading. "My God," he said, "what you read is exactly what it says."

Let's face it, some parts of our "secret" Masonic monitors aren't all that tough to figure out. Nevertheless, at the tender age of ten I could claim to have cracked the top secret Masonic code.