Hideout
Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt.
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When I was ten, we moved to a little suburb of Portland, Oregon, called Milwaukee. I loved it. There were fun kids in the neighborhood, and it wasn’t city. There was plenty of wooded area, and there were bushes growing along the side of the road that fairly burst with blackberries for our pleasure.
It was a growing area, with several building sites nestled among the wonderful, tall pine trees. Those areas were a treasure trove for a bunch of kids itching to build a treehouse, and in my memory, the guys on the work crews got a kick out of supplying us with lots of bent nails, scraps of tarpaper, and odds and ends of lumber.
(ours wasn’t this fancy–we didn’t have any adult help!)
We found a tree that was a fairly easy climb, and that had perfect branches for our project. We labored all day every day for what seems like maybe two weeks or more, putting down a floor, building up walls, creating windows, and it seems like we used something for a ceiling. Maybe some of the bushy boughs from the trees.
Every day we went home with pine pitch on our clothes, in our hair, and our shoes. We were allowed to use only our oldest, raggedy jeans and shirts because the pitch just didn’t come out very well.
We were finally finished, and I remember spending the better part of the next week tucked away in our hideout. We played games, read, loafed around, chatted with the builders who were pretty complimentary about our efforts.
Then, one morning, the reality of the existence of rotten people hit us right between the eyes. Someone had trashed our hideout. Completely destroyed, it lay in pieces on the ground all around the tree.
We asked the work crews, and they were sympathetic, but hadn’t been there when the damage was done.
Well. We went on to other projects, and we got over it. But the memory of the fun of building, and the sick feeling of helplessness when someone wrecked our fun, stays in the crevices of my memory.
Absolutely marvellous post and even I reminiscence the children days and so mean people can be to tear the place down.
Meanness cuts across all the generations, doesn’t it? Good thing niceness does, too 🙂
Yes absolutely, kindness and love always work the best why be mean and dirty and for what.
Stinkin’ mean people. My friend, Patty Holden, and I were squatters in an abandoned tree fort one summer. We would swipe oreos and whatever else we could find from my house or hers and then head to the fort for an afternoon of snacking, reading and secret sharing.
Exactly. And someone just couldn’t stand it that we were having such a good time. Well, I’ll betcha I’m a happier person now than those meanies are 🙂
Yep, I’ll bet you are. Unless they met Jesus somewhere along the way… 🙂