We spent many days climbing in and out of freshly dug basements, up the newly constructed beams of the main and then the second floors. We would test our balance walking the rafters of the roof. Every not and then you'd get a really nasty splinter or step on a nail, right through your shoe, but that wouldn't stop us. Again, a good reason to keep your tetanus shot updated.
My brother Mike and his friends, Craig, Gino and Mike, had begun to hang out in the back yard, they would meet on our patio and then head back into the field behind the empty lots and home construction sites.
One day I followed them and found out where they were going and what they were up to. They were using wood from the scrap piles to make a pretty nice fort. By the time I found it they were almost done. I waited in the field for them to leave and went into the bushes. I walked all around the outside of the fort hoping to find the entrance. It was well hidden and had a lock on it. Curses! foiled again!
That night I waited until Mike had left his room and went in to look for the key. I was ready, I had even brought a flashlight along. Just in case I needed to be stealthy. However, it was daylight so the flashlight was not necessary. And to be honest, Mike is not a very good at hiding things. He left the key out on top of his dresser. Maybe he knew I was snooping and wanted to give me a chance to check out the clubhouse without actually giving me permission. Mike is a kind person, so I took that as a 'yes'.
I grabbed the key and ran to the field to check out the hide out.
It was amazing, aside from the dirty magazines there was carpet, shelves mad eout of cement blocks and a fire place. You read that right, a fireplace! in a wooden fort! Michael is much more crafty than I could ever be - in the next year they would have installed electricity and powered lights in the fort using a car battery. His friend Gino fancied himself to be the next Bruce Lee and so a pair of nunchucks hanging from the wall. It wouldn't be odd to see him in the field practicing with them. He was actually quite good and the first person I knew that practiced martial arts.
Mike's clubhouse or fort inspired me. Not to be outdone I grabbed some paper and started to draw up plans. I had no clue what I was doing, but it would be twice as good as Mikes. Mainly because I was going to build a second story.
Diane and Walter lived off of Ryan Road and their parents had a couple of acres where they planted beans and cucumbers. You know, vegetables always taste better when they come right from the field.
build our clubhouse. For materials we walked around the subdivision and picked pieces of wood out of the scrap piles. We found a perfect pallet to use for the floor and went around the ground to gather dropped nails.
We did this enough times to build the structure of our fort. We didn't have any tools so we took a hammer and crow bar from Diane's garage. We did have one large rock as well. Some of the nails were bent when we found them so the first step was to straightened out, by banging them on the rock until they were usable again.
We made a slant roof and door, complete with latch and lock. We almost had a second floor, well it had a double pallet floor so the second half was a little higher than the first. We made a secret trap door in the floor so we could keep our dues hidden.
We worked all day long and then I would spend the night. I have many fond memories of waking up in Diane's room to the sound of her parents playing Yatzee in the kitchen, bacon and eggs on the stove ready to feed us before we head back out to the fort.
When the homes under construction added shingles to their roofs we were able to find enough pieces from the scrap piles to completely cover the roof.
We were going to add insulation, but that didn't really end up in scrap piles and after we pulled a few strips out of the walls of a home under construction decided that being covered in fiber glass wasn't really worth it.
Creating that hide-out was probably the best thing we could have done that summer. Looking back, I am pretty proud of it - I mean we were just goofy kids with no construction skills. None of us had made anything prior so the fact that it didn't collapse on us is amazing.
That summer we would pick veggies and hunt for 'pets' in the form of field mice and grass snakes, go swimming in the creek, and then go hang out in our fort.
We used it for a couple of years and then like everything else in your childhood we just sort of stopped using it. The novelty wore off and other things became important.
I guess it just faded away in our lives. But the memories will always remain.
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