Day Eighty-Five: Down Memory Lane

In today's quest for a photo I came upon this stately treehouse that rises proudly above the first floors of the houses in the neighborhood in Lawrence in which I grew up.*

*for those of you who were counting, that was eight prepositional phrases in one sentence - not counting the "dangling" preposition at the end...

Something about this treehouse called out to me for a picture - and called me away from a couple of other scenes I was thinking about photographing today.

Was it:

· that this was the only tree in the entire (front) yard of this house on the corner lot, making this lofty plywood castle visible for blocks?

· the green 2-by-4 steps crawling up the side of the tree, reminiscent of the Calvin and Hobbes tree fort in which the cartoon 6-year-old and his faithful tiger companion held meetings of their club G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS)?

· the memory of my old tree house that once stood high among the hedge apple trees not too far away from here?

...Probably a little bit of all of these.

In any case, coming across this arborial harbor today prompted me to take a walk down memory lane and visit my old back yard to see if the treehouse my dad and I built about the time I was 8 or 9 years old had stood the test of time.

The trees surrounding my childhood home were sporadically covered in thorns, which must have been an initial concern in the location and construction of the house...but Dad and I found a group of close-growing trees that looked like the perfect spot to build our lumberial loft. And what better protection for a mighty tree fort than to be thicketed in thorns and surrounded by softball-sized hedge apples (read: ammunition) hanging from nearby branches?

I remember spending time up in that small (but sturdy) room in the trees - in between games of horseshoes, tetherball, and whatever other adventures my friends and I could find in the backyard.

But taking a stroll past the old-but-familiar yard today I found that most of those things I remember are now gone. The treehouse has vanished. The horseshoe pits have been uprooted. And all that remains of the tetherball game is a lonely rusting pole...no more ball...no more tether.

Things have changed as I walk through the old neighborhood.

But strolling down Memory Lane, everything is still the same.