I was so proud of that thing and dreamed many happy dreams on lazy summer afternoons. Often I would hear the 5:00 train whistle in the distance.
Alas, after Grandma died, the house was sold, and in the process of converting it into a duplex it caught fire and burned to the ground. Everything was razed. Barn, chicken houses, all the trees, and my beloved tree house all but a memory. Someone built a fancy new one-story and graded the huge lot and planted grass and put up an ugly utility building. It was at the edge of a small town.
I suspect arson, really I do :-). It's all but a memory now. I've never forgiven those people for ruining my treehouse. It should have made the National Register of Historic Places.
People, places, pets, and things that we loved live in our hearts as long as we live. I moved around so much when I was a child I never had a tree fort. Then we ended up in a southern suburb of Chicago we had those soft Maple trees which weren't really strong enough for them. I think my happiest times as a kid was when I lived in a trailor court about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh PA in the country. I guess there were about 30 to 40 trailors and we were all neighborly except for the always present grouch or two. I lived there when I was 6 through 8 years old.
Next to the trailor court was a place we called the "dips" for the hills it had in them. Somehow we managed to make two baseball diamonds. One of them we had to cut a fairly good size tree down with a hatchet. Can you imagine today parents knowing their kid was using a hatchet? Well our parents just let us roam and we had so much fun out there in the country. Sometimes we would plan to do an all day hike which our mothers would make sandwhiches for us. Then off we'd go. Those were the only days we didn't play baseball amoung other things. In the winter sledding was the thing, good hills for it. One of the kids father made us a 6 seater bobsled which if the snow was good we could ride from the tallest hill right down into the yard of the guy who made it for us. He was a coal miner and his youngest son was one of the buds in our group. Come to think of it I don't know why we never built a tree fort. ??
I have resolved that I will never go back to that place as I don't want my memories to be replaced by seeing subdivisions and an asphalt road instead of a tar road. I don't want to see the changes.
You've given me the thought of maybe writing a book about my life. Not that it was exceptional or anything like that but my life is unique to me. I lived in a time that most people today would have a hard time believing.
You're tree fort is a Historical Site. It lives in your memory and hardly a sign in front of it even if saved could ever come close to remembering it the way you do.