My Tree Fort

My Tree Fort

Our house was on the corner of two streets so our backyard was twice the size of all the other houses in my neighborhood growing up. My father had built a fence down the middle of it and right next to the fence was a 50' pine tree. Unlike most trees which only have one trunk this tree had three side by side they slowly grew apart as they went up. I believe I was around nine the summer I asked my father if I could build a tree fort in the tree. My father said it would be okay and I went to work with my free nail bag from the local lumber yard filled with my fathers nails and one of his old hammers. Like most boys my age with sisters the first thing I decided to do was build my fort high enough up the tree my sisters wouldn't want to climb up to it.

It was only 10' higher then the 6' fence which was plenty as you could climb up the fence but then you had to use the branches to get up to the fort. It was more the sap that kept my sisters away pine tree branches are covered with little pockets of sap all over them. My hands would be covered with it but I got use to it working with the hammer and saw quickly turned the sap on my hands black and it would soon lose its stickiness. When I'd started on my fort my father had a pile of lumber scraps on the side of our house but by the time I barely got two thirds of the floor built I'd used it all up. I didn't draw any plans previous to building it as trying to figure a floor plan around three two foot in diameter trunks heading off in 3 different directions would have given an architect a head ache.

Anyway I was resourceful as were my friends; Brian who lived a half a block down the street from me and Jeff who was two years younger and lived next door. The second day into the build Brian came over and told me about a construction site 3 blocks away where they were building like 10 apartment complexes. So we just waited until Sunday when we knew no one would be working then we went and scouted out the site. They had tons of 2x4's and huge pile of scrap lumber so we carted off all the scrap during the day and made off with twenty or so 2x4's that they would just let us have. Though we knew it was wrong we did it anyway we needed it and there it was, that was how we acquired most things. We didn't live in the bad neighborhood though we did have one just a mile or so east of us and another one a mile or so north of us. We lived in the dilapidated neighborhood which eventually was over run by the 2 bad neighborhoods years later.

My father had scene the scrap would and questioned how someone was there on a Sunday to give us permission to take their scrap pile. Then the next day saw all the new 2x4's that were all six to eight feet long all he said was something like 'Those didn't come from no scrap pile' He was mad and if we hadn't already used them to build the walls of my fort he probably would have made me take them all back and