Seasons
By Mike Freeman
It is 1961, and my third-grade friends and I have a problem. We need a place where we can gather to form secret clubs and make our plans. It has to be a place free of annoying siblings, yucky girls, and nosy parents. They get in the way and make our lives more complex.
We know it is just a matter of time before we come under nuclear attack. Once a month during school, we wait for the wailing of distant air-raid sirens. When we hear the sirens go off, we duck under our school desks and cover our heads. This protects us from the imminent nuclear devastation of inbound Russian missiles.
We develop a brilliant solution. We will build a treehouse in Jimmy's backyard. Girls, little brothers and sisters, and our parents can't climb the tree and won't know about our hidden, booby-trapped entrance. Only we know how to enter and exit safely.
We scrounge around for building materials. George's garage provides some two-by-fours and other lumber for framing. We find plywood scraps in my garage that will become floors and walls. Additional building materials are in Jimmy's garage.
We begin sawing and hammering immediately. We nail the support boards directly into the tree limbs. They form the foundation for the rest of the treehouse. Careful analysis determines the number of nails required for each board. When in doubt, add an extra nail. We hope we nail enough of them straight through the boards to reach the tree limbs.
Our treehouse design morphs as we add each piece of plywood for flooring or walls. We end up with a split-level treehouse. Our on-the-fly architectural skills amaze even us. We build the treehouse entry and decide on booby-trap locations for unwanted visitors. There is enough wood left for a roof that provides shade. Two days of feverish building activity produce our treehouse masterpiece.
Jimmy's dad comes out to inspect our work. For some reason, our parents are nervous about our activities—something about the high location in the tree, broken arms, and disastrous collapses concerns them. Jimmy's dad gives us a thumbs-up. We pass inspection!
We begin our meetings in our new luxury abode. We make a list of who is allowed into our new fortress. It is very short. There are three names on it. People not on our list will suffer the consequences of our booby traps.
One night, Jimmy's parents host a small party with my parents and some other adults. Jimmy's mom and my mom decide to investigate our architectural wonder. They climb up the tree and enter our private quarters without triggering any of our security measures. My mom gets a leg cut on a stray nail. We find out about this the next day and are horrified. The failed security measures are a larger concern than my mom's injury.
How do we stop this from happening again? We take out every other step to the treehouse to make climbing more dangerous. We make the entry smaller to prevent large adults from entering. Designing a new anti-adult and anti-girl booby trap becomes a top priority.
A fierce storm with heavy rains and wild winds rolls into our neighborhood one night. The tree holding our fort shifts and sways.Water soaks our plywood floors and walls. The roof collapses. Our dads immediately revoke our building permit! They commence dismantling our architectural masterpiece. It ceases to exist.
George, Jimmy, and I revert to an old strategy. We will dig a deep underground bunker on one side of my parents' home. An underground tunnel will connect to an identical bunker at George's home. The tunnel will run underneath an alley that runs between our homes and connects our cul-de-sac to a local park. Parents discover our plans and immediately veto them. Just like that, our underground empire dissolves before the first shovel hits dirt.
The three of us are like ships with no home harbor. We have no base of operations or refuge. The park behind my house has trees along its perimeter. We climb our favorite tree and hold emergency planning sessions to determine our next move.
A miracle happens. My dad begins construction of a clubhouse in the small side yard of our home by the alley to the park. It is about 5 feet wide and 10 feet long, with a door on each side. It covers the exact spot where we previously dug our deep, secret bunkers.
He is an engineer and overdesigns the entire project. Inspired by our split-level treehouse design, he builds a two-story clubhouse. The second floor has a large window area overlooking the alley connecting our cul-de-sac to the park. My dad builds a shingled roof over the entire structure. Then he paints the building's exterior.
My status in the neighborhood soars. No one has a clubhouse like this. My friends and I now have a secure meeting place. We put locks on the doors to keep the riffraff out. We create a trapdoor on part of the second-floor roof so we can see if anyone is spying on us from our blind spot between the clubhouse and my parents' home. We draw up defense plans to put skyrockets at each corner of the clubhouse for protection. We will use smoke bombs on anyone attacking our fortress. Anti-adult and anti-girl booby-trap development efforts reignite.
Our talented hands build further improvements. A cabinet to store our chemistry set supplies and a table along the second-floor window facing the park alley. We begin pursuing research with our chemistry set chemicals to develop explosives, smoke bombs, and other weapons of mass destruction to safeguard our new castle.
We create plans to expand our citadel. New trapdoors on the bottom floor will lead to a vast underground bunker and laboratory. This new refuge will be strong enough to survive a direct hit by a Russian nuclear missile. Our parents will thank us and think we are heroes when we let them and our families join us in the safety of our new sanctuary.
We quickly discover another benefit to our two-story establishment. It provides absolute control of our little brothers' and sisters' access to the park, its play areas, and pool. We let adults and teenagers travel the alley both ways free of charge. Our siblings and young neighborhood girls must pay us homage or some other type of fee. Those refusing will suffer the wrath of our rubber band guns, water balloons, dirt bombs, and other weapons.
My new clubhouse makes us masters of the universe. We have sleepovers in it during the summertime, guarding it from burglars and others who desire our technological developments.
Occasionally, our parents allow our little brothers and sisters to have sleepovers in the clubhouse. We lock our valuables inside our cabinet and ensure our siblings are aware of the spiders and black widows living in our headquarters. We tell them the spiders only come out at night and are invisible during the day. They are fierce biters and poisonous.
Our minds and bodies change and grow as each summer goes by. Our heads begin bumping into the clubhouse ceilings. Our interests expand beyond our yards and neighborhood.
My clubhouse stands for years. It goes from sibling to sibling over the years. Our bustling home becomes an empty nest. A retired engineer finally pulls down the weathered wood of a memory machine he created. Some things are built to last. Others are built to be remembered. I am grateful for them both.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heaven:
A time to be born and a time to die,
A time to plant and a time to uproot,
A time to kill and a time to heal,
A time to tear down and a time to build,
A time to weep and a time to laugh,
A time to mourn and a time to dance,
A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
A time to search and a time to give up,
A time to keep and a time to throw away,
A time to tear and a time to mend,
A time to be silent and a time to speak,
A time to love and a time to hate,
A time for war and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Turn! Turn! Turn! Recorded by the Byrds in 1965
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