with apologies to Kenny Chesney, I thought perhaps some insight as to where I came from, and how things were then might explain a lot about me , and why I am the way I am.
The town I grew up in was a very small town when I remember it first. We had some paved streets, but we had more that werent There was a fire road next to my house, that ran through some fields next to and behind my house. My back yard began a series of fields and vacant lots that stretched a half mile to the interstate. The adventures I had in those fields. They were baseball fields, battlefields, jungles and long lost excursions into the frozen tundra. Those fields were my home away from home. We dug foxholes, forts, tunnels and of course built the required tree house, many times. We had mini wars in them, we stole corn and hid in them, and we even raided trains from them.
Those fields effectively worked as the border of the world for us at that age. We were sometimes brave enough to venture to that edge. We'd take a bag lunch, because it was long walk. We'd bring flashlights and extra clothes for the weather. We'd be extra careful to avoid the wild animals that lived in the woods, we'd all heard tales of bears, and lions, but all we could ever catch a glimpse of were the extremely dangerous killer squirrels and possums. There were a line of trees, at the southern border of the world, it was there we made a tree forts. We were Sargent's , Lieutenants, Captains and Generals, Explorers and Indian Chiefs. We'd take pieces of wood, from nearby construction projects, there were no slabs in a tree. These were massive tree estates. We'd add on to each others elevated estates, a finished product would rival the Taj Mahal. We'd always identify which additions we were responsible for. You would write your name on the wall or ceiling you added. We spent the better part of the summers and falls in those estates. Oddly enough, Girls were never allowed in the field, weeds or woods. It wasnt their parents, it was the unwritten law of the men of battle.
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Sounds similar to my growing up years, both in Ohio and in Illinois.
ReplyDeleteI recall this tree fort we had in Illinois. Near it was this Osage Orange tree. Has the ugliest, most pungent a sticky fruit you've ever seen. Resembles the wrinkles on a Shar Pei or what the crevices and fissures on a brain look like.
We'd store them up in our fort and have wars--pelt the "invaders" with the hedge apples. They would shoot at us with pea shooter and dent corn. Looking back on it, I suppose it could be dangerous. But, we were just being kids and no one ever got hurt.