T is for...tree
houses
I think we moved
from the house I was born in to the house I grew up in when I was
about 6 or 7. Well, I wasn't actually born in the house but
it was the house my parents lived in when I was born in the hospital
like all good modern babies were.
We moved from a
post-war housing neighborhood to a custom built home on one acre in a
neighborhood carved out of a pine forest across Buffalo Bayou from
the heavily wooded and mostly undeveloped (then) forest of Memorial
Park. We didn't actually live on the bayou but it was a short walk
down the street and through the yard of a house that did back onto
the bayou.
A couple of
years after we moved, my father built us kids a tree house. He
selected three large pines on the wooded side of our acre so that our
tree house was triangular in shape and built maybe 10' off the
ground, perhaps 6' x 10' on two of the three sides. The only picture
I have of it is the one in my head so I'm guessing at any and all
dimensions. It had a board ladder nailed to the trunk of one of the
supporting pines, low walls probably 3' high and was roofed and sided
with cedar shakes.
Well, probably
he built the tree house for my brother, but I spent many an hour up
there.
Like all kids in
all neighborhoods we would, every so often, divide up into factions
and war on each other. Every year after christmas, we would make and
raid each other's christmas tree forts but what I really remember
were the pine cone wars. Not for the meek were they. They would
always start in someone's yard, pine cones were plentiful and hurt
like the devil if one of the missiles hit their mark, but once we
retreated to the tree house, we were unbeatable. We had not only the
advantage of high ground but we also kept a stockpile of the closed
hard prickly pine cones up there.
Eventually, as
we all grew older, the tree house was abandoned and after we were all
grown, my parents sold the house. A high rise stands now where our
house and the tree house once stood. The woods and fields we played
in are also gone.
I've never lost
my love of tree houses, gained though watching many a Tarzan movie,
and I sometimes wish we had moved out to the country sooner. Any one
of the three large pecans in the big back yard or even the tallow in
the little back yard would hold a small tree house. I fear the grandkids
are already too old though for one to hold much mystery for them.
While the one we
had as kids was quite simple, I could easily live in one of these.
If you would
like to catch up on the rest of my alphabet posts, click on the link
on my side bar. It's up there near the top under 'stuff about me'.
