Opps, I just Forted!

Like most young boys I had a fort, or two, or dozens.

In our back yard there was a giant maple tree with branches perfect for building a tree fort in. So I did, with some help of course. It wasn’t a grand tree fort or tree house, what ever you want to call it, but it was a place to get away and hide. I think back now and wonder just what I thought I was getting away or hiding from. I can only guess that it was probably chores. I cannot really remember playing in it too often. The only thing I remember vividly is climbing up the trunk and falling backwards on the stonewall when one of the steps gave way. I think maybe I hurt my rear so badly I didn’t use the fort very much after that. Luckily this was only one of several places I escaped to. During the summer months I had choices. I could go climb up into the tree fort, go in the hay barn and build a hay fort if there wasn’t one already there, or if it was too hot I would stay inside and build a blanket fort. Blanket fort? What’s that? Well… a blanket fort is made out of blankets, obviously. You first have to arrange your surrounding. Chairs worked the best but pretty much anything you could crawl under was what you were after, and what you wanted to move around to give you places to drape the blankets over. I would construct these forts in the basement where it was cool and as you walked downstairs you wouldn’t be able to see the floor anymore just a bunch of blankets being propped up on tables and chairs or whatever. The closest thing I could use to describe it is that it looked like the aerial view of a slum village with all of its mismatched rooftops covering everything. Underneath them though is where the fun happened. (Unlike the slums I imagine unless you’re a millionaire! Get it?) Typically I ended up creating a series of tunnels that I would crawl through as fast as I could without getting rug burn preferably. Like most things though when you’re young you get bored with quickly and eventually, you just need to stand up!

There was a camper that our families shared and every time it came to our house that was where my brother and I would sleep. It was outfitted with two nice sized sleeping pads on each end but we often didn’t sleep on them. Instead we would pull them off their perches and stack them over the center area of the camper’s interior and sleep on a couple sleeping bags underneath our fort inside the camper. What was the point of this? I have no idea, but it was fun and isn’t that what being young is all about?

As I mentioned earlier we also had hay forts. In the barn there were two sections where my dad stored hay bales (AKA perfect fort building blocks, great R value!). It was hard work making the forts because it required so much rearranging of the bales and sometimes these things were pretty heavy for a little tyke like myself, but what a sense of accomplishment when you got done. One of the facets I liked most was to make the entrances secret and easy to miss to the untrained eye. This was fairly easy since I was so small already. The slightest gap between bales and I could wriggle myself through them in a blink! During the hay harvesting season, as my dad would stack bales into the lofts, and with enough begging, he would build a fort for us as he went. These were my favorite because you never knew what to expect. I remember needing a flashlight because the tunnels seemed to go on forever until I got to my little lair. Hay forts were also nice in the winter because they kept you warm. The other alternative in winter time was to build a snow fort, which we did often. We had a big driveway that required lots of plowing and where there was plowing there were snow banks. Having all the snow in one great big pile meant you were half way to your fort already. All you have to do is dig it out. I will admit at times I felt a little bit claustrophobic. The forts usually turned into tunnels to the other side with a bigger carved out section in the middle that I could hide in. The greatest snow fort I ever build was with one of my classmates. We used a 5-gallon bucket to make the bricks. It ended up being about 4 feet tall inside with a small crawl door, window, and a shelf to store snowballs. The shelf and window were so we could throw snowballs at girls going by. What girls? This was the farm not the playground at school! We didn’t have time to toss any anyways. That night there was a storm and I swear I thought lightning struck close to the house while I was in bed. Next morning, get up, and guess what…..the sweetest snow fort of all time had blown up. I knew this because the boards we used to brace the door and window had been burned. I was sad I’ll admit, but not because my fart had blown up, butt because I didn’t get to see it happen!

And yes, fart jokes are still funnyJ