Clubhouse

Built in Chris's backyard from scraps of construction sites

Chris says:

A clubhouse to last for the ages. We were the first. The pioneers. The trail blazers. After we built The Hut (we didn't call it the clubhouse), everyone else and their dog decided that they needed some kind of clubhouse for themselves. And all theirs turned out better than ours. But there is something to be said for being the first.

We hauled scrap wood from all over the neighborhood (and beyond) and with our very limited understanding of construction, we built the ugliest hut ever. It looked like an outhouse built for two. Thinking back, I wish we would have cut a little moon in to the door -- for the limited time that we had a door. The thing I was most proud of was the fact that it had an upstairs. We had such big plans for The Hut that first summer -- we were going to sleep out there, and hold all of our clandestine meetings inside. Of course, like a lot of the big plans we had (Project Euphoria), it was more fun to plan than to actually carry out.

Sleeping in The Hut was really out of the question. First of all, it was only about six feet square. Secondly, it was so hot inside -- it was like solitary confinement in some Vietnamese POW camp.

The other great innovation was to build a sloping roof, with a little platform on the front -- just right for jumping off of, on to the trampoline (which was really it's primary purpose for most of it's existence). Do you remember when we built it? It stood for several years. In fact it wasn't torn down until I was on my mission (sometime between 1991 and 1993).

Aaron:
We were the first, and everyone else had their Dad's actually build them, we did ours.....no help. Of course ours was so overbuilt I think you could have parked a truck on it.

We jumped off the roof of that hut because your mother was not too keen on our jumping off the house onto the tramp. Since the house was like a 8' drop, jumping off the hut was only like 4'......if that. Speaking of jumping off stuff, do you remember the time we took the screen out of your mom's window in her bedroom and jumped out the window down to the tramp? I get a cold sweat thinking about that stuff. I would kill my child for even THINKING something like that let alone actually DOING it.

{sigh}

The hut was great, way too hot. I remember we somehow got a piano hinge from somewhere and made the door and had it actually swing in. Of course, it rained, and the hinge rusted shut. We had to kick in the door to get back in. I think we were going to sleep in it at one point, in the upstairs loft, but by the time we got our sleeping bags up there, it was way too hot and too small. I think if we had done it, one of us would have fallen down the hole to the bottom floor. We pulled our stuff and slept out on the tramp.

The hut was an accomplishment, we were the first to get one up, and probably the last to take it down. How many people can say they built a 'hut' with their best friend growing up?