“The Tree fort”
Drove through my old neighborhood and had a flashback. I grew up on the edge of suburbs in a new subdivision.
It was a mix of farm fields and woodland.
We passed time looking for quartz crystals, riding bikes and exploring the local woods .
The hierarchy was Adults .. always yelling get out of there!!, we probably shouldn’t be playing around new home construction but hey there was always curiosities like climbing new concrete foundations and running on new footings. Then there were “the big kids” a pair of teenagers who were a terror. One morning I heard an excavator running, I looked out my front window to see it spinning in circles and two kids jumped off and were almost hit by the bucket! That summer they managed to start another excavator and drove it into a sewer trench.
My friends and I decided to build a tree fort , it had to be far from the adults and big kids. We found a nice patch of woods and found three trees equal distance apart. 12 ish feet .With all the new home construction there was ample “ scrap “ wood available. The first floor platform went up and not satisfied with that we kept going. After the third floor and 40’ up we added bunk beds. The days passed and the weather got cooler so it seemed logical to add heat. We gathered up bricks, mud, cinder blocks and some cast iron pipe for a flue . Everything was great until one of my friends father came strolling back with his volunteer fire fighters equipment.
Damn…. He stopped about 50’ away with his hands on his hips gazing at our castle , jaw open.
He climbed up to the second floor and looked at our fireplace took off his helmet scratching his head and gave a nodding approval. Unfortunately he said no more fires . The smoke had also gave away our location to the “ Big kids “ a week later they had destroyed our masterpiece.
Oh well fun memory anyway.