Back in the day, Chris Shea, Adam Lamb, Austin Moening and I built a 4-story tree fort in the fields by my backyard. It started as a 1-story fort but we could not resist the urge to continue to build higher on the perfectly-suited tree. It was a majestic thing with a superfluance of nails.

The first level was enclosed in plywood and the second and third levels were just floors made of 2 x 4s. The fourth floor was more like a ceiling or roof. There were no guard rails on the fourth floor and it was very high up and kind of scary. It was one of the triumphant accomplishments of my youth. Me and Shea hung out there a lot--and yet--I don't have a single picture to prove it.

Update: I found a picture of us on the fort but it is at night and all you can see is a 2x4.  I was talking with Chris the other day and he said that my aunt took a picture of us all on the fort.  I will have to search my parents' albums for that photo.  Dave, when can I borrow that document feed scanner?

A rival fort emerged near the top of the hill by the power lines in the fields.  It was probably more soundly constructed and it was completely enclosed on all four sides.  However, it did not have the height that ours had.

I remember that me and some of my high school buddies challenged the owners of the rival fort to a game of capture the flag.  The flag was a person from the other team that you had to rescue and return to your fort. 

What resulted was a fierce and no-holds-barred competition.  Not content to simply chase or out run us, the other team absconded Rick Davies and began to give him an ample beating.

That pretty much ended the game.  We treated our captives nicely though.  Despite the fact that they were forced to sit atop the fourth story where there was no guard rail, we provided them with efervescent beverages from my dad's green cooler and "gentlemen's" magazines.

We used to have these huge ant hills in the fields.  They were mounds of dirt, probably about two feet in diameter by one foot in height.  There were literally hundreds of ants crawling on top of each other doing who-knows-what.

My brother and I would pour various substances on them or throw caterpillars in the mound and see what happened to them.

One time we peed on them.  Those were simpler times.

As I started to become more social in high school, I spent less time at the tree fort and so did Chris Shea. The fort began to fall into disrepair.

One day I was playing video games with some people at my house. I know for sure that Kevin and Jimmy Territo were there; I can't remember who else was there.

Anyway Kevin heard some screaming coming from the fort and saw that someone had fallen off the fort. There were two kids and the one that was not hurt was asking Kevin to call 911. Kevin asked what happened and apparently, the kid had climbed to the fourth story of the fort and started destroying it. I think Kevin was tempted to not give them the phe.

911 was called and the ambulance arrived shortly thereafter. My parents were out and when they came home there was an ambulance in the driveway. They were freaked out but probably relieved that neither of their kids were hurt. The funny thing is that I didn't even realize any of this was happening. I was just in my own merry . . . Read More..

It was probably late winter or a January thaw when Austin, some other friends, and I visited "Greenland". This was a part of the fields that was marshy and we could never really explore. I can't recall why we called it Greenland. Since it was winter, we thought we could explore it by walking on the ice.

Someone threw something out into the middle of the ice and I walked out to get it carefully. Unfortunately, the ice was too thin and I fell through. The good thing was that the water was only about waist deep so I was able to come running and screaming out. I ran all the way home and my mom helped me take off my pants and warm up. I think we put my legs in warm water and had some hot cocoa or something. I'm not sure if we ever visited Greenland after that.