When my son was eight years old we built a tree house together. This wasn’t an ordinary tree house. In fact the situation around it seems so sad and pathetic I’ve felt embarrassed to share the story for most of my life.
We lived on the edges of a good neighborhood, on a cul-de-sac lined with identical, run down quadri-plex housing. Our street was known as the slums of Bowie ISD. A very large field separated our strip of rental housing from the highway, and in that field was one very large tree.
It so happened that one day someone propped a massive headboard from a waterbed up against our dumpster. With the help of my son, we tumbled it over to the back of the house, down the hill and up again, to the big tree, where we hoisted it up by ropes and balanced it atop big sprawling branches, where it held very firm with many kids climbing on it. A few days later someone, we don’t know who, nailed little boards on the tree so that kids could climb up more easily. The tree house was firm and strong and lots of kids played there.
One day we walked out to find that someone had destroyed the tree house. The steps had been torn away from the trunk, and graffiti was all over the tree house.
I asked a few kids who were walking through the field if they knew who had destroyed the tree house and, before I knew it, I was surrounded by a gang of teenage boys.
I did not know it was a gang at the time, not even familiar with the term, except in movies. One of the angry young men stepped up to me, slamming his fist into his hand and saying he heard I was asking who did this to the tree house.
Maybe it was instinct, but I felt no fear. Or, if I did, I didn’t show it. I was too upset about the tree house to contain myself. I complained to the young man that we’d worked hard on the tree house and didn’t understand who would want to tear it down.” He looked surprised for some reason. I wasn’t expecting that. He seemed to be thoughtful for a few seconds as I stood my ground … I believe for a split second I might have realized my life hung in the balance. Then he looked kind of sad, looked down and turned away. He motioned to his friends to walk away with him and we never saw that gang again.
We never returned to the tree house though, it was too sad to see. Besides, every place that we lived was just temporary. We weren’t there much longer, but the last time I drove by, the old tree was still there. There is no tree house at all, but the tree still stands strong, last I saw.
Just googled it. Still there.
Oikos 