The Treehouse

When you read the word treehouse you will automatically picture a small strucure about 10 feet off the ground built out of wood with a couple of walls and a roof. A more imaginative mind might also picture a rope, trap door, and some windows. Wrong. To me, this is not a treehouse. The image that I have just described I would call a small structure about 10 feet off the ground built in a tree. A treehouse is at least 50 feet tall and some 20 feet wide. Yes, there is some wood, but it is mostly built out of metal. A treehouse has hundreds of firepoles, and ropes, a few giant tennis net hammocks, a tent, several benches, a pulley system, electricity, lounge chairs, airplane controllers, flags, street signs, and a basketball court. It is not that I was blessed with an imaginative mind, this description was for my family a reality. For 15 years, this treehouse was my dad’s every spare second, his childhood dream made a reality by a black walnut tree, and we were his little elves that assisted him every perilous step of the way.

I had just made myself a very pleasing snack and ready to plunge my big white (I had exceptional teeth) into a peanut butter and Clover Club chip sandwich when my dad came in through the back door.

“I need your help; we are going down to Stoker (an old elementary school that had been recently sold to the University of Utah) to get something.”

I put down my sandwich reluctantly and headed for the door. I knew that for the next few hours I would be involved in another one of my father’s interesting, and possibly life threatening projects. When we got down to Stoker I could see what my dad wanted. The treasure he sought entailed three huge metal screens that had recently been taken off the basement windows of the school. These pieces of metal were about 12 feet long and 6 feet wide and weighed just about as much as a 12x6 piece of metal should weigh. Each of us grabbed a corner and we paraded, like some sort of freakish circus act, back to our house with this huge monstrosity between us. We had become very agile bike riders having had retrieved several such objects over the years. I was beginning to see myself as some sort of modern day pirate, only instead of gold and silver our treasure was everybody else’s’ junk, stuff that could have no possible use for anyone but my father. My dad could turn an old pig trough into a fashionable wading pool, or an old disgusting garbage can into a water heater, in fact he had invented both of these items as well as several other inventions of questionable legality.

After making the third trip I was extremely tired, but little did I know that the fun had just begun.

“Alright boys. Now that we have these here we are going to tie a rope to two of the corners and pull it up there.” He pointed to a spot in the tree about 20 feet off the ground. “Andy, you come up in the tree with me. Bryan and Dallin you stay down on the ground and guide it up to us, once it has left the ground run up and join us in the tree.”

“That’s imposs-ible!” Dallin whined, sounding just like Mark Hamil.

Just then Heath, a neighbor who was about Andy’s age saw the commotion and came over to
help. It was a good thing too because Dallin and I would have been squashed like bugs if he would not have shown up.

Everything went smoothly lifting the beast up to the huge branch where it would eternally rest, the problem came trying to get this new platform up and over that branch. As I ran up the tree I could see Andy starting to teeter. I jumped branch to branch agile as a cat in an attempt to save my brother from a scary death. Just before I got to my brother my foot slipped. Luckily my shin took one for the team and broke my fall, leaving me a permanent reminder of this blissful experience.

Now that Andy had gained his balance I turned to look at my dad. He was standing on a 12 inch wide branch with one foot while he had both hands on the metal platform pulling it over the branch.

“Wow,” I thought, “he could be a female gymnast with that balance.”

Working together as a team we finally got the platform into place, but if I had any thoughts of devouring my delectable, custom made sandwich, they were quickly dashed. I ended up holding up support beams and side railings for more than four hours. About two hours into our covert operation my arms felt like they had been run over by a bus as a side effect from holding them above my head until all of the blood had run into my feet. My dad was welding a couple of feet above me and I had my head down, away from the scary bright light of the fire, not to mention the dangerous sparks flying everywhere. All of the sudden I felt a warm sensation a on the back of my head. I remained reasonably calm for about a half of a second until I saw a huge chunk of my hair zoom past my face.

“What the,” is all I had time to say before I realized what had happened and I started screaming like a mad cow, “Help, help, help, I’ve been hit HELP!”

My dad and brothers watched me run around like a chicken with its head cut off for about 30 seconds before I stopped, realizing that I had no pain due to the fact that my nerve endings had been melted off by liquid metal. For the next couple of weeks my head sported a fashionable bald spot that made me look like I had recently received a lobotomy.

And so went the construction of the ominous treehouse that looked more like giant scaffolding. Piece by piece, hour by hour, day by day for 15 years. For 15 years I spent at least part of every Saturday in that black walnut tree usually suspended in some strange position dangling 30 feet above a concrete driveway. It was all for a good cause however, and I will never forget the endless hours I spent with my family literally clinging for my life while building the world’s biggest and most interesting treehouse. One day future generations will thank me for my sacrifice.