Little Danny Daze

Little Danny Daze

By: Daniel J Lavato



The Neighborhood,

It seems to me as though I always had a good time growing up in Northern
Minnesota. Playing in the neighborhood, and at the lake and in the woods.
Older kids would keep and eye on the younger ones and we all had fun. In those
days your folks would let you out of the house in the morning and be confident
that you would come home before dark safe and sound.

There was a small market in our neighborhood where you could buy pop cycles and
candy and such. My folks would give me a quarter to spend before I left home
for the day and I would save it for a treat from the market.

There were about a million pop cycle stick littering the ground near the
market. One day one of the older kids showed me how to weave several of them
together to make a "flying saucer". You throw it with kind of an underhand,
side arm motion and it would spin and fly a long way, exploding when it hit the
ground. How neat! I would run and fetch all the pop cycle sticks and weave
them back together and let fly again. Boom! It was so neat the way it flew
apart in all directions when it hit the ground. That kept me amused for the
longest time. And there was an endless supply of material for more the
following days.

There was a large, block square sandlot across the street from the store that
was the neighborhood playground. There were no slides or swings or merry go
rounds but there was a baseball diamond marked off and a volleyball net and a
small building we called the "shack". During the summer there were college or
high school girls there that helped us do arts and crafts. We would make
ashtrays out of clay for our folks, and make plaques with our hand prints. We
would draw and paint and color. It was so much fun. Our folks loved the
things we brought home for them in the evening.


Ice Starz,

In the winter they would flood most the neighborhood playground and make a
large ice rink. They would put boards up on part of it so the boys could play
hockey, while the rest was used to just skate around and such. The girls could
spin and jump and make figures. It was so much fun watching them do that.

The "shack" had a pot bellied stove that was kept fired up so we could go in
and get warm. We would put our wet mittens on the stove and they would hiss
and the steam would rise. The shack smelled like hot wet wool most the winter
months.

I was not that good of an ice skater. I have "weak" ankles. None the less I
had hockey skates and a stick. It was like a rite of passage. If you were a
boy in northern Minnesota you played hockey, that's all there was to it.

My cousin Archie on the other hand was a good skater. He was short and stocky
and could through his weight around pretty well. Hockey is a game of
intimidation. The idea being that when the opponent touches the puck you drove
them into the boards with enough force so that they would have that in the back
of their mind the next time they went for the puck. Worked for me. I am not
fond of pain, and it wasn't long before I would hear the opponents skating up
behind me and cringe. I must admit that watching the girls swirl and jump and
do figures was much more fun to me than playing hockey.

Pain didn't bother Archie at all. He thrived on pain. On one occasion Archie
was playing goalie. He didn't like that much as he would rather skate and run
into people but our goalie was hurt and we needed him to play in there. As bad
luck would have it the puck came my way in spite of my efforts to avoid it. I
started skating toward the opponents goal, pushing the puck ahead with my stick
as best I could. The next thing I knew I was driven to the ice by one of the
other team. He snatched the puck off the end of my stick with his, took a long
stride or two, and with a wind up slap shot fired the puck as hard as he could
at Archie standing in our goal. The puck hit a rough piece of ice, went
airborne, and hit Archie in the forehead right between the eyes! Archie
staggered back a bit, his eyes rolled up, he dropped to his knees, and threw
himself forward over the puck. Unreal!

We all skated over to him. He was face down on the ice with a puddle of blood
forming around his head. One of the older kids skated over and helped Archie
to his feet, covering his bloody forehead with a wet, woolen mitten. Archie
was dazed, and still looking for the puck.

The older kid kept telling Archie, "You're OK. You're OK.", and helped him to
the boards. A small crowed gathered to see what happened. Older kids started
to put chunks of ice on Archie's wound to stop the bleeding. No one wanted to
get in trouble so we were trying to make sure Archie didn't go home with blood
on his clothes. Maybe his folks wouldn't notice a three inch wide, deep gash
in his forehead.

Archie's folks did notice the wound of course, and forbade us to play hockey
with the older kids anymore. Worked for me. Just the excuse I needed. I was
content to watch the girls skate from then on.

Archie ignored the instruction of course and was back playing in a week. He
was even more intimidating now with the bandage on his forehead. Nothing makes
you into a real hockey player like stitches.


Cowboys,

Fortunately I was never seriously hurt too often growing up. Probably one of
the worst times was when I was bit by a dog.

Danny Killfoil and I had cowboy outfits to the max. Our folks loved that kind
of thing. We had coonskin caps too, like Davie Crockett, but cowboys were our
favorite. We had boots with spurs, hats, chaps, and gun belts with two six
shooters and a row of ammo all around the back. We would dress up in out
finery and protect our neighborhood from outlaws and Indians.

What we were missing of course were horses. But where would a six year old get
a horse?

On one occasion we were dressed up like cowboys and out exploring the
neighborhood when we came across the biggest dog I had ever seen. It was
chained to a porch, and watching us intently.

"Wow!", I told Danny Killfoil, "He is big enough to be a horse!"

"Don't get too close!", Danny Killfoil said with concern.

"I'll bet I could ride him.", I said.

"NO! NO! Stay away!" Danny Killfoil pleaded.

Not heading his warnings I walked boldly up to the horse, I mean dog. I didn't
notice the way he bared his teeth as I ambled over, palms of my hands resting on
the butts of my six shooters, cowboy hat set low on my head, spurs jingling
away.

I stood near him, sizing him up. He was chest high. Just about right I
thought. I was thinking of how to climb up on him as I reached up and put my
arm across his back.

The dog whirled and bit me in the face! Danny Killfoil started yelling and
screaming and the dog turned toward him. Danny Killfoil backed up quickly.
The dog followed him to the end of his chain.

The dog had bit me in the eye! Blood was running from my forehead and cheek.
It hurt SO bad! I put my hand over my eye and ran away from the porch. The
dog stopped chasing Danny Killfoil and went back after me. By then I was out of
reach. The dog strained against his chain, growling and snapping at us.

Danny Killfoil was jumping up and down and yelling, "Oh No! Oh No!". He
tugged at my sleeve, trying to get me to run toward his house.

I was scared! Blood was running down my arm. I couldn't see. I blindly let
Danny Killfoil pull me along.

Oh no! I was getting blood all over my chaps! Mom is going to kill me! I
kept trying to brush it off but that only made it worse. Both my hands were
bloody now and I was making a mess of everything I touched. Oh no! My shirt!
My pants! My gun belt! Oh No!


Soon we were in Danny Killfoil's front yard. He was yelling for his mother,
who came out on the porch to see what was going on. Danny Killfoil was
frantic, and the moment his mother saw me she was too. She started to run
toward my house, then came back to use the phone instead.

After calling my mom she came out of the house with a cold, wet wash cloth and
put it on my face. She was asking Danny Killfoil what happened. He kept
jumping up and down and saying I was trying to ride a horse and it bit me.

As Danny Killfoil's mother wiped my face off I saw my mother running over to us
as fast as she could. She was frantic beyond belief. It was clear to Danny
Killfoil's mother that she was going to be no help at all. My mother is no
good at all in panic situations, and she can't stand the site of blood. She
all but fainted when she saw me.

My dad had the car at work but Danny Killfoil's mom had a small, English Ford
"puddle jumper" and took us all to the hospital. They cleaned my wounds and
bandaged my eye. Gave me a shot to keep me from getting lock jaw or something.
My mother spent most the time crying.

That was the last I ever saw of my cowboy outfit.



Shovel Runner Dan,

Several of my uncles lived in the neighborhood. One was a shovel runner at the
mine. Now the kind of shovel he ran was nothing like the shovel you used to dig
dirt in the garden or clear snow off the sidewalk. The kind of shovel he ran
was as big as a house and could fill a truck or railroad car with oar in a
single scoop. He had to climb up two sets of ladders just to get into the cab
to operate it. It was very impressive.

I was fascinated by how he pulled the levers and the long arm out front went up
and down and the big bucket on the end would scoop up the dirt. What a machine!



One day my dad came home from work with a huge cardboard barrel sticking out of
the trunk of our car. It was held in place with ropes to keep it from falling
out. Along with the barrel were several lengths of narrow boards, large wooden
spools, and all kinds of other stuff. I could hardly wait to find out what all
this was for.

My dad worked hard all day and often came home very tired, but as often as not
after a short rest and a good supper he would find time to play with me. We
would throw a ball back and forth or he would chase me and we would wrestle.
Sometime I would help him wash the car or clean the basement. We built a dog
house for my uncle Jack's dog Spike once. That was fun.

So after he rested a bit we went out to the car and unloaded the trunk.
Stacked all the stuff in the yard near the shed by the road. With a big smile
on his face dad said he was going to make me a shovel like uncle Hank ran. Oh
Boy! I was going to love this!

He proceeded to cut a door in the barrel on one side and a window on the other.
He used metal hinges on the door so it would open and close. I tried it out
right away, going inside and looking out the window. It worked!

I made a wooden stool to sit on while dad cut the boards to various lengths and
fastened them together with hinges. Soon though it got late we had to go to bed
and the shovel would have to wait for another day to finish.

I would play in the unfinished shovel every day, imagining how the parts would
go together while waiting for my dad to get home from work. Little by little
the shovel took shape. Metal plates went on the barrel to hold the wooden
arms. Ropes went up and down the arms and around the wooden spools. A wooden
bucket was made with a bottom that would open. This was so much fun!

After awhile I could actually raise and lower the bucket, and open and close it
too. I couldn't dig much dirt, but I could pretend. Soon we added wheels so I
could move the shovel from place to place. I loved it! And I spent endless
hours working on it. Helping dad make things for it. If it had motors like
uncle Hank's it would have been the real thing.

It was about that time I decide that I wanted to be a shovel runner instead of
a cowboy.



Dan's little Buddy,

Uncle Hank's wife was my mom's sister Lavelle. She was a wonderful lady. She
loved to sew and make things for us kids. She made me a rag doll once that I
carried around constantly. That was before I decide to be a cowboy. I had it
sitting on the back bumper of dad's car one day while I was playing in the
yard. Dad got called to work unexpectedly and he drove off with my doll still
on the back bumper. Oh No! I chased him down the road yelling but he never
heard me. I was in tears. What would become of my doll?!

Mom tried to calm me down. She said she would go see if she could find it for
me and recruited Mrs. Killfoil to drive us to Rainy Junction to see if the doll
was still on the bumper. We would watch for it along the way just in case it
fell off.

When we got there we found my doll still sitting on the back bumper. Arms
wide. Big eyes and a smile on it's face. I was SO happy! I loved that doll.
It was to be the only black person I ever knew until I was in college.



Peddle Pusher,

One day my dad came home with a red bicycle in the trunk. Oh My Gosh! A
bicycle! For me! I was SO happy. Dad helped me balance as I peddled as fast
as I could and down the road I went. I fell over trying to turn around, but
didn't get hurt. I got up and he ran over to me and got me going down the road
back toward the house. After a bit I got the hang of it and could start and
stop without falling over. I was much better at bicycling than skating. I was
glad.

Now I could go ANYWHERE. I could ride over to see uncle Hank and aunt Lavelle.
We lived on one end of the neighborhood and they live on the opposite end. The
playground with the shack was pretty much in the middle. Now that I had my
bicycle it wouldn't take as long to get to those places.

My grandma lived only a few doors down from uncle Hank and aunt Lavelle. I
liked to visit grandma too. And my uncle Jack stayed there sometime, he was
fun. I liked to play with his dog Spike. Spike was a Beagle. Uncle Jack said
he was a hunting dog, but I never saw him hunt anything. Mostly we just played
with sticks. And he never bit anyone. That was good.

Uncle Jack had a model T Ford sitting in the yard near the garage. I loved to
play in it. It had levers coming out by the steering wheel and out of the
floor and I was sure I could figure out how to run that car if I could only
reach the peddles on the floor. Uncle Jack thought it was probably a good
thing I couldn't reach the peddles.



Riding in cars with Dan,

I liked riding in the car. My mom and dad would take me on vacation every
year. We would drive for many long hours on the narrow, two lane roads that
meandered endlessly around Minnesota and Wisconsin. Sometime I would sit I the
back and color and draw. They even made me a bed back there so I could sleep
when it got dark.

But the most fun was standing between them on the front seat so I could watch
where we were going. Look out at the other cars. At the houses going by, the
trees and the fields. Railroad tracks, trains with boxcars or oar cars racing
along beside us. Miles and miles and miles of telephone polls.

I would stand there looking at all the stores and the people and cars in the
little towns we would slowly drive through. Dad would work the big steering
wheel and the levers and the peddles on the floor. Mom would hold me on the
belly to keep me from falling forward when we stopped. Sometime we would pull
over in a little town and eat, or get ice cream at a gas station. It was so
much fun.


One time though we were driving along a road with farm fields on both sides.
You could see the farm house way off in the distance. The farmer was bouncing
along on his tractor, driving toward us through his field. When suddenly a
huge bird startled by the noise of the car and the tractor flew up from the
side of the road right in front of us! Dad SLAMMED on the breaks! Mom threw
herself in front of me as the bird crashed through our windshield, sending
glass everywhere.

Our car skidded to a stop alongside the road. Mom and dad ask each other if
they were all right then climbed out of the car on either side. My dad was
carefully brushing small pieces of glass from his hair and clothes. Mom
inspected me to be sure I was all right then started to pick glass from her
hair and clothes as well.

The farmer had seen what happened and come over to see if he could help. He
ask mom and dad how they were, and kneeled down to look at me. Then he looked
in the car and retrieved the large bird.

"Pheasant.", He proclaimed, holding it up in one and inspecting it. It was
dead.

My dad was shaking his head and looking at the damage to the windshield. It
was smashed out on both sides, and glass filled the dash and front seat and
floorboards of our car.

The farmer, still clutching the dead pheasant, told dad that there was a small
town only a few miles down the road and we could probably get the windshield
fixed there. Dad thanked him for his help. The farmer held the pheasant
closely in front of himself and softly asked dad if he wanted the bird. Dad
said no, he didn't want the bird. The farmer could have it. The farmer with a
gleeful look thanked dad profusely and then bounded quickly back to his tractor
and made off toward his house across the field.

Mom and dad and I carefully picked up all the broken glass we could and then
drove slowly to the next town, wind gushing through the open front of our car.
As luck would have it there was a garage there that had the glass we needed. We
spent the afternoon in town, slowly eating and drinking in a small café then
walking around town and looking in all the stores. That was pretty much our
vacation that year.



Dan goes belly up,

Anyway, I loved my bicycle. I could explore the furthermost parts of the
neighborhood. And I could ride REALLY fast. I could almost keep up with the
bigger kids. If I had a bigger bike I could have beat them, I just new it.

The only problem was that my side would hurt after ridding really fast. I
don't know what caused that.

Then one day I started feeling very badly. I was sick. Everything hurt. I was
dizzy. I kept throwing up. Mom kept putting cold wash cloths on my forehead
and gave me aspirin and yucky tasting black syrup on a spoon but it didn't
help. I spent all my time in bed sleeping. And throwing up.

A doctor came and looked at me. He took my temperature and looked in my eyes
and ears. He told mom I had the flu and would be fine in a day or two. She
was to feed me chicken soup until then. I went back to sleep.

When I woke up I didn't know where I was. Maybe I was dreaming? Everything
looked so strange. There were no windows in the walls. And everyone was
dressed alike. But I couldn't tell who they were. I went back to sleep.

When I woke up my mom was sitting next to my bed, but it wasn't my bed. This
bed had metal pipes along the sides so I wouldn't fall out. Everything was
blurry but I could tell this wasn't my house.

When I tried to sit up mom leaned over and hugged me, then laid me back down.
I had tubes up my nose and taped to my arms and bandages on my stomach, and I
was very, very sore.

Mom was crying. I went back to sleep.

When I woke up my uncle Jack was sitting next to me. He smiled at me and ask
me how I felt. I wasn't sure. Uncle Jack said that I had gave them all quite
a scare.

It turns out my appendix burst and I almost died! Stupid doctor! He told my
mom I had the flu when I was really being filled with poison by a bad appendix.
It finally burst and they had to rush me to the hospital and cut my appendix
out and give me transfusions and everything. I was going to have to stay in
the hospital for awhile until I got my strength back. I was lucky to be alive!


As it turned out being in the hospital wasn't that bad. I met another kid who
shared the room with me. Uncle Jack brought me stacks of comic books to read.
Mom and dad came to visit every day. I got to eat lots of good stuff.

The only bad part was when I got out of bed too soon and tore my stitches and
they had to sew me up again. That left a really bad scare. But that was all
right. I had fun showing to my friends when I finally got home.

When I got out of the hospital I was still very weak. The doctors said I
needed to get plenty of exercise to build up my strength again. This turned
out really well as my folks rented a cabin at a lake and we spent all summer
out there. It was a long way for my dad to drive but they said it was worth
it. We had a great time. I spent all day swimming and rowing a boat. Mom
would swim with me sometime and we would toss a beach ball back and forth and
chase it in the sand. One time it blew away and mom had to swim half way
across the lake to get it back. Mom was a really good swimmer back then.

In the evening when my dad got home we would have cookouts. We would build a
bonfire and roast hot dogs and marshmallows on a stick. Dad and mom's friends
would come to visit us often and they would sit by the fire and drink beer and
tell stories and laugh. It was great.

I had a wonderful time at the lake that summer. There were many rental cabins
where families from town spent the summer, so there were lots of kids for me to
play with. There was a small store nearby where we could get supplies and mom
would give me money so I could walk over and get treats. I was sorry to have
to say good by to all my new friends when it was time to leave. But summer was
almost over and school was going to start soon and we had to move back to town.



Danny Killfoil sure was happy to see me come home again. I was happy to see
him too. He thought my scar was pretty neat. And we were looking forward to
walking to school together and seeing all the other kids again. And showing
off my scar.



New Digs,

My folks really enjoyed the cabin at the lake that summer too so they started
to look for a new house by a lake. We drove to this place and that, trying to
find just the right one. Then one day we went back to look at a little house a
second time, then a third. It was at a place called Ely Lake. It wasn't right
on the lake, but it was near it. There were several other houses on the road,
but it wasn't like our old neighborhood with many houses and streets. Mostly
just a few roads with houses here and there. Lots of trees. It looked like a
great place to go exploring.

The house was smaller than the one we had. It had no basement. It was more
like the cabin we rented at the lake. It had a small kitchen and a front room
and two small bedrooms. The walls inside were made of wood. It was pretty
neat. I liked it. So did my folks. My sister was very small and didn't
really know much one way or the other.

The nicest thing about the new house is that it had a HUGE yard. Much bigger
than at our old house. And this one was full of trees. I had my own woods!
This was going to be so much fun, I just knew it.

Once school got out for the summer we moved to the new place. I was sad to
have to leave my old neighborhood, but I would still be able to visit all the
time because my uncles and aunts and cousins still lived there. And I would
make new friends at the new place. And get to go to a new school. My folks
assured me it would be fun.

I had learned about Indians in school, and knew they buried their dead in
Indian Mounds. Indian mounds were like dirt lumps, only bigger. Smaller than
a hill, but bigger than a regular lump. Often they had arrowheads and pottery
in them. Interesting and sometimes valuable things were often found in an
Indian Mound. And as luck would have it, the woods in back of our new house
was full of Indian Mounds! Oh my gosh!

I ran to tell my mother what I had found. An Indian Mound! She walked back
into the woods with me to check it out. She was not impressed. Probably just
a dirt lump she said. Leave it alone.

Leave it alone? No way! Mom went back to the house to watch my little sister
and I went into one of several small sheds behind the house and found and Army
Shovel. An Army Shovel is one that you can fold the part that digs against the
handle so you can store it easy. Dad had several of them because he used to be
in the Army.

I gathered up the shovel and ran back to the Indian Mound and started to dig.
I was sure I would find arrowheads and pottery. I would keep the arrowheads to
show my friends but give the pottery to my mom. Mom likes pots. She has a
kitchen full of them.

Odd, I wasn't finding any arrowheads or pottery, just old cans and bottles.
Odd. I tried a nearby mound. More old cans and bottles. The cans were mostly
grocery cans. Like soup and beans and such. The bottles were mostly whiskey
and wine. They smelled bad! The further back I went the older the cans and
bottles seemed to be. All rusty and nasty. Yuck! I dug up most the mounds
and never did find any arrowheads or pottery.

When my dad got home from work he asked what I did all day and I told him about
the odd Indian Mounds. He thought it was pretty funny. Turns out the old guy
that used to live in the house buried his trash back there. I would have to
look elsewhere for real Indian Mounds.


Building in the woods,

It wasn't long before my dad and his friends started to clear away some of the
woods to make a garden. The chopped down all the trees in one area in the back
and off to one side. They picked that spot because it already had an open area
so there would be fewer trees to clear.

I had been wanting to build a fort in the woods so this was going to work out
well for me, now I had logs. My friends and I would drag the trees that had
been cut down onto the woods and started to assemble them into a log cabin.

It was much more work than we had thought. For one thing we had to cut off all
the branches. That was no easy task. There were a lot of branches. We cut
them all off and then hauled them into the clearing and stacked them into a big
piles so my dad could burn them. Then we tried to notch the logs like the
pictures we had seen of log cabins. Problem was our logs were much smaller and
there wasn't much room for notches. None the less we did as best we could. We
laid them in a square and started to stack them up.

We kept this up until my dad and his friends had finished clearing the area for
the garden. They had cut down a lot of trees, but not nearly enough to make a
cabin. In spite of all our work all we had was an enclosure about waist high.
It was clear we were not going to get a cabin made like this. It was a big
disappointment.

My dad had doubts about how successful we would be building a log cabin but
felt bad for us anyway. One day he came home with a large canvas tarp. We
went out to our abandoned fort was and he helped us set some of the logs into
the shape of a teepee. He tied them in place with rope and then wrapped the
canvas tarp around them. How neat! Instead of a pioneer cabin we had and
Indian teepee. We loved it!



The Joker is Wild,

By now the garden area had been cleared of trees and the guys were busy pulling
stumps. You had to get rid of all the tree stumps so you could plow. Most came
out by digging around them and chopping them out, but some were too big for
that. The solution to that problem was something they called a "Joker".

A "Joker" was made from an old car that could no longer be used to drive on the
roads. One who's body got rusted or banged up real bad but still ran and shifted
all right. They would take the body off and throw it away, leaving just the
frame and the bare minimum of components it took to run the car. The front seat
and steering wheel and peddles. Gas tank in back, motor and radiator in front.
Battery on the floor by the driver. That was it. The idea being that it would
be lighter and more powerful, and easier to work around as you had to get on
and off constantly.

They would dig down around the stump, chop out as much as they could, then wrap
one end of a heavy chain around it. The other end of the chain was fastened to
the rear frame of the Joker. Everyone would get back out of the way in case the
chain broke.

The guy on the Joker would start it up, make sure everyone was back, then roll
forward until the chain was tight and then give it all she had. There would be
a mighty roar! Smoke would come rolling out from under the Joker and around the
motor. The rear wheels would spin and dirt and stones would fly back in a
stream! The Joker would bounce up and down, grasping for traction and howling
as if in pain!

Bang! Bang! The chain would go slack then tight again. The Joker would heave
against the strain, roaring and smoking, dirt flying. The stump would not give
up easy.

Finally the stump started to move. You could see it began to lean toward the
Joker, hanging on for dear life to the ground it had spent all those years.
But it was futile. The Joker was too strong. The stump lost it's grip and
came out of the earth like a bad tooth.

What a sight!

I learned a lot about cars from that Joker. Without the body I could see what
makes a car work. I studied it endlessly. Trying to figure out what all the
components were. How they worked. And how they worked together. The
mysterious levers and peddles were finally understood. Gas, oil, water. It
all made sense now. Fascinating. I was still years away from being able to
drive a car though, I could hardly wait.

Then one day dad came home with a Soapbox Derby racer sticking out of the trunk
of his car. Oh My Gosh!

It seems as though on of the guys he worked with had made it with his son for
the big race and no longer had a use for it. They lived in town and there was
no place to play with it safely so they wanted to get rid of it. Dad jumped at
the chance to take it off his hands. The roads around us were lightly traveled
and there were a couple small hills nearby on which to use it. This was great!
It wasn't long before my friends and I were taking turns careening down the
nearby hills.

As much fun as it was to go down the hills in the racer it was no fun at all
having lug the thing back up again. A few moments of fun resulted in several
long minutes of pushing and pulling the car all the way back to where you
started. Whew! That got old in a hurry and after awhile we turned out
attention to other things.

I tried and failed to motorize the racer using an old electric motor and a car
battery. It almost worked. Except it didn't go very fast, the belt from the
motor to the rear axle would slip, and the car wouldn't go very far and the
battery would go dead. So much for that idea. Nice try.


Up, Up, and Away,

The racer languished until one day I noticed how much the body looked like a WW
I fighter plane fuselage. Well now, maybe I was on to something. It needed
wings and a tail of course, so I went about gathering wood and canvas from
another failed project, the tree house.

The teepee was fun to hang out in, but I had loftier ideas for a clubhouse. I
had noticed there were three rather large trees growing near one another in a
triangular pattern in another part of the woods. I loved to climb and had
climbed them several times. They had good strong branches and were quite
sturdy.

I noticed how the branches were very nearly the same height on all three trees.
I thought we could use parts of the old fort and teepee to make a tree house.
We could put logs on the branches between the trees and tie them in place with
rope, then use the old fort logs to make a floor by laying them across the logs
between the trees. We could hang the canvas over it once the floor was done.
Sounded like a good plan, so we went to work.

Problem was the branches were not exactly the same height and the floor was not
level at all. We couldn't use it like that.


At least we had a platform on which to work so we set about making a level
floor out of wood planks by nailing them to the trees. We managed to find
enough wood to make the frame by scrounging around the area. Our parents were
always remodeling or building or tearing something down so we could get the
unused pieces for our tree house.

Problem was tying to drive nails through the boards and into the tree far
enough to hold our weight. That took some doing. But we managed to run planks
between the trees and make a level floor at last. We used other bits of wood to
make partial walls and then hung the canvas to enclose the rest. We even nailed
short pieces of board to one of the trees to make it easy to climb up. Not bad.


Until one day when we up there showing it off to some new kids. Someone
discovered a loose nail and pulled it out. Oh No! That corner of the floor
let loose and the whole thing swung down on the remaining two corners like a
hinge. We all tumbled through the poorly constructed wood and canvas wall.

I landed hard on my back and was dazed. The other kids managed to get to their
feet, and with the exception of a few cuts and bruises none were not seriously
hurt. But the fall knocked the wind out of me and I couldn't breath! I thought
I was going to die! I was gasping for breath, clutching my chest and throat.
The new kids saw me gasping and looking like I was about to die and ran off!

My cousin Jerry helped me to my feet, put me in a bear hug, and started
squeezing my chest. Tears came to my eyes and I started to breath again. Oh
Man! That was terrible.

Needless to say that was the last of the tree house. We had to get all that
stuff out of the trees and swear never to do that again. Dad cleaned out one
of the small sheds we had and let me use it for a clubhouse. What it lacked in
charm it made up for in safety.


Anyway, back to the airplane. I nailed boards together in the shape of wings
and covered them with canvas. I made two long wings and set them one above the
other using short, narrow boards for bracing. I tore apart the Soapbox Derby
racer and set the body in place, fastening it to the lower wing. I made a
short single wing for the back and a shorter second single wing for a tail. I
even fastened a set of wheels under the lower front wing to make the landing
gear. It was a rather short, stubby airplane but it didn't look too bad.

Problem was it was no fun at all sitting on the ground. Airplanes were meant
to fly.

I had plenty of rope so I decided to suspend the airplane between the trees at
the old tree house sight. I thought that if I hung the airplane up in the air
it would give the sensation of flying. Once again I climbed the trees and laid
logs between the branches. I fastened one end of the rope to the front of the
airplane, ran it over one of the logs between two trees, then pulled the nose
of the airplane off the ground a few feet. Then I repeated the procedure with
the rear. The airplane was now eye level off the ground, as if flying between
the trees. Neat!

Getting in was no easy task as the airplane would tip over when I tried to
climb over the side. I finally had to use a short folding step ladder and
gingerly slip in. Once in I could rock the plane a bit to give it a feeling of
motion, but if I wasn't careful it would roll over and pitch me out. This idea
needed work.

I started experimenting with the placement of the rope where it attached to the
airplane. It would have been best to attach the rope at the ends of the wings
but they weren't strong enough. The best I could do is loop the rope around
the body right in front of the wings. Adjusting where it was tied off made it
a little more stable. You still had to be careful but with practice you could
make the airplane swing back and forth and lean from side to side as if turning
and diving and such. Pretty fun.


To be Continued,

I was still years away from being able to drive a real car or fly a real
airplane and would have to settle on riding my bicycle for the time being. My
cousin Jerry and I spent many hours riding our bicycles around the lake.
Riding to the seaplane base and watching the airplanes take off and land on the
water, then with a roar taxi to the long dock and unload the passengers and
goods. We would shop at the store and swim at the beach. There was always
activity around there. Fun to watch and be a part of.

Sometime we would peddle to the store down the road. Buy treats and sit
outside and watch all the cars come and go. Make a game out of identifying all
the different makes and models. We didn't know it at the time but we would have
quite an adventure in one of my cars one day. But that was still years away.
For now we would just continue to watch and imagine.