A SUMMER DAY

Dog days – that’s what grandmother Ethel called the days of August; hot, sticky, humid dog days.  I wondered just what that meant.  Did dogs have days?  Did my Spotty suffer because of the heat.  I knew he panted a lot that’s for sure.  Nanny said dogs pant to sweat.  I wondered?

When August rolled around I always started to wish that school would begin.  I waited the whole year for summer but when it came I did about everything I could do by around the 4^th of July.  

So the daily task -  how to fill my day?

Well, I thought, I could play war with Wesley across the street.  We would sit for hours in the sand.  (There were patches of white sand everywhere in south Millville)  And play with the 100 green rubber World War II army figures that I got for Christmas.  The set including a couple of plastic tanks, some tan tents and a bunch of other instruments of death!  I had painted many of my “men” with wounds of red nail polish – a garish color that my mom gave me because she hated it.

Wesley would attack my mud fortifications and I would beat off the Germans.  (My army set came with a like number of gray guys we called the Germans) Then my turn and I would attack his mud caves.   The Americans always prevailed. 

This activity got old real fast.  Imagination just goes so far and then fades.

What could I do now?  I know!  Ride my bike around the block and pretend I was a race car driver.  This two got old after about four or five revolutions down Stratton Avenue and back.

 

My day dragged on.  And then I got the best idea of the summer.  I am going to build a tree-house!

I asked my Pop Pop when he came home for lunch if I could use some of the wood from his pile of various boards that he seemed to be always collecting behind our big garage.  He said yes – but be careful of the rusty nails.  

Now rusty nails were an anathema in my world – one misstep was known to pierce the toughest sneaker and cause a dreaded case of lock-jaw – according to my grandmother who related tales of poor unwary kids who met untimely ends because they “did not watch where they stepped…especially by Herb's ugly woodpile!”

And so that afternoon I began and worked throughout the day.  

Wesley and I drew a rough “blueprint” of what I knew would become a masterpiece of  kid craftsmanship.  After much engineering discussion and false starts we began to build a clapboard and crooked box like room against the big ancient pine tree in my backyard.  (Editors Note: For practical reasons it was decided that the building team didn’t have the skills to build a tree house in the tree – both were afraid of heights – so it was to be a house by a tree.)

My plan called for a first floor  10 X 6.5 foot "house" with a hatch in the roof which would gain access to the “second story” observation deck.  This deck would be perfect to spy on girl neighbors and guard against attacks from imagined Indian tribes.

We toiled the rest of the day.

When Pop came home from work he took a look – he just smiled and asked if I needed some help?  

After supper he installed a door and a window.  Helped me with the hinges for the roof escape hatch and shingled the plywood roof.  We decimate his wood pile to my grandmother’s glee.   

With Pop’s help I now had Cal’s Clubhouse (the painted sign also read "For Members Only")   I spent the rest of August deciding just what the purpose of this “club” would to be.  And I spent many hours lying on my shack's roof, cap gun in hand,  surveying the neighborhood for invading armies.

Most of all I was pleased to report to Nanny Ethel that, to date, I had not stepped on a single rusty nail.