I took some photos of a small building measuring about 4'x6' resting in the back yard of the place where I grew up on the east side of Indianapolis. It's a fairly innocuous little structure, too small to really be useful as a workspace or for serious storage or much of anything else except for it's original intended use: a playhouse.
My father built it for me when I was about eight or nine-years-old. My childhood friends and I had spent a number of damp, itchy, nights in small, smelly canvas pup tents and had built a number of makeshift structures in our backyards out of whatever we could get our hands on including a hodgepodge of wood for framing, cardboard boxes, and even on occasion old scatter rugs, which really got funky when rained on.
I voiced my desire for some kind of a clubhouse or "fort" to my dad, who at first dismissed the idea. Undaunted, I drew up plans for what would have been, if built, larger than some of the neighborhood houses. I conceived a structure which would be large enough to house around four fold-down cots, at least a couple of chairs, a cook stove, and a ladder leading up to what would have been a small cupola for a "lookout." Dad informed me I was nuts.
A week or so later I spied my Dad pulling into the garage one evening with the trunk of the car ajar, the lid tied down with sisal twine. Protruding out the rear were four or five wood pallets he brought from his business.
My father was a partner in a small printing company. Paper was delivered to them on wood pallets. These pallets had well made 'two by' frames and the tops were solid 1'x8' pine wood planks unlike most skeletal type rough hewn pallets one usually sees today. Over the next couple of weeks, Dad appeared with more of these pallets, odds and ends of wood, and other paraphernalia. Through it all, he remained mute regarding his intended use for all this stuff.
Article comments
1 - Joanne Huspek
I think you should take out a loan and rescue it! Okay, that sounds silly. Thanks for sharing the story.
2 - Baritone
Joanne,
I'm working on a sub-sub-prime mortgage as we speak. The guy I'm working with deals out of the trunk of his car. That's a little strange I guess, but I'm sure he's on the up and up. He has a logo on the side of his black 1984 Lincoln Towncar which has the legend: "You don't say no to a guy named Vito." Most of his co-horts just call him "Kneecaps.":%}
I suppose I might have gotten a few more comments if I had claimed that my "comrades" and I had weekly neighborhood Party meetings in "The Shack." That's where we would sit around reading Marx and Lenin out loud to each other, and where we hung up posters of Stalin, Krushchev and Mao to which we paid homage every morning, noon and night.
We even used The Shack to "pal around with terrorists" from time to time. It was all good.
B
3 - Baritone
Or!! Perhaps I could create some "keywords" to track this article - say, Obama, Beer, Sex, Sarah Palin, Wide Stance, Scandal, Beer, Super Bowl, Beer, Queer Eye, Jack Daniels (or Jameson for the more discerning,) Beer, and, well, More Beer, etc., e.g., op cit, ibid, etal, and on and on.
B(eer)
4 - Baritone
Or!!! Just take this opportunity to say that you're ALL losers - well, except for Joanne, of course. A double shot of Jameson for you, Joanne!
Hell, if I have a few shots of Jameson, or given my more esoteric taste - Thunderbird, I won't give a shit about some old shack either.
B
5 - Dr Dreadful
We even used The Shack to "pal around with terrorists" from time to time. It was all good.
One man's terrorist is another man's kid who rings on the neighbor's doorbell and runs away...