Forts are Fun

QUESTION 10: My favorite place as a child?

I grew up in tiny rural towns dotting the prairie in eastern South Dakota, with populations barely breaking a hundred, gravel-road tic tac toe boards encircled by waves of grain. We didn’t leave our setting often, so we constructed our own.

Escape from the neighboring eye proved elusive and that we were, retreating into tree strips on the edge of town, where we built forts and created worlds often representing our own with pretend kitchens and stoves, but different because we were away as far as we could be, only a couple minutes to make it home in time for supper.

Forts were fun. We built them in the trees with sticks and whatever randomness we could gather. We found them in abandoned sheds and once an old milk truck left alone in a field storing boxes of Playboys. Curtains and seating made it feel homey despite earth’s creatures sneaking in the rusted-out holes.

We built forts in the house, some that might last a weekend upstairs out of dining room chairs and blankets, but we built forts downstairs that might last weeks until its tunnels and rooms deflated while army crawling on the concrete floor of our unfinished basement. Besides, we were ready to transform back to Roller Rink.

I liked forts, and I liked stairs, especially the fort under the stairs, that little nook creepy enough but cool enough to entice you.

Mostly, my sister and I played on the stairs, sliding down them on a long pleather-side couch cushion like Santa in his sleigh, which ended when the basement paneling finally came, to cover up the hole we made one day.

Stairs proved the perfect setting for church, school, newscaster, police and whatever else we could come up with.

On a different set of stairs, a few years later, teenage sisters fought over a duffel bag and sent each other rolling down longer, steeper stairs of linoleum with that silver metal edge. Funny memories, nonetheless.

I also loved the swimming pool and lake. We lived 7 miles from one town, 15-20 to another where we took swimming lessons religiously. My mother grew up never learning how to swim and she swore her kids would know so, to the pool we went for lessons each summer, asked to be on the swim team but finances didn’t allow for any more extra curricular activities.

Swimming lesson days floated long enough, after class in the morning, we retreated to the little lake next door to eat lunch and swim some more. Some days we stayed there, other times we went back to the pool, especially after I earned my badge to battle the high dive.

But in the evenings, my favorite place was our living room, especially on weekends when Dad was home. Our family would clamber into the Ford Bronco for the Friday night trip to town, quick stop at the grocery store where Mom also grabbed her paycheck, run into Kmart to make a payment on the layaway, then on our way to Freeze Frame to rent a VCR and slew of war movies, ninja movies, scary movies, funny movies we watched nonstop ‘til Sunday night or sometimes accrued the late fee.

The couch moved from its regular home for 48+ hours with the recliner alongside it, both positioned in front of the TV, long thin gold velvet curtains drawn, popcorn and fried dough lingering in the nose. Cateques, is what we called them. Patties of bread dough fried in oil ‘til golden brown, removed and doused in cinnamon and sugar, yummm. I loved movie weekends in the living room.

When the couch was in its usual place backed up against the banisters with the end table and lamp tucked in the corner, that was my favorite place to spend all-nighters. Reading asked me to escape and I said okay, take me for a ride. Maybe because we only owned a few books I reread enough times to envision myself as the characters, or maybe because I truly desired brown hair and a boyfriend, and wanted to visit the ocean, and was sure grateful my grandpa didn’t have Alzheimer’s, and wanted to be an Indian. When we purchased an Encyclopedia set from a traveling salesman, I taught myself sign language and dog breeds.

“Honey, did you stay up all night reading again?” asking her "good morning."

“Sorry, Mom,” an apology only of sound while tired eyes absorb the last paragraph.

Where is my favorite place to be as an adult?

Good question.

In my home, I’ve created a couple nooks for reading and writing, one with a light blue velvet low-seater antique chair with delicate but ornate wooden framing, the other below a cylinder-shaped scarlet velvet vintage lamp hanging with a gold chain.

Outside my home, I love driving through the winding roads of the Black Hills, going for walks to the nearby park, drinking beer at Lost Cabin.

I love my home on the other side of the state, where my parents and brother and mucho extended family, and back-home friends live.

But I don’t know that physical place matters as much as emotional, and my favorite place to be is feeling good, so wherever that leads me.

Friends make me feel good, who happen to be the subject of Question 10...