Happy Father's Day

Today is Father's Day so naturally my thoughts have turned to my father, a man who did everything for his daughters.

So many thoughts, so many memories. The trips we took, the expectations we would always be on our best behavior, the eyebrows that knit together when we weren't, the toys, the unusual vehicles and his building projects . . .

I was in eighth grade when Dad came home from work one day with a wooden, creosote-soaked utility pole in the back of his pickup.

"I think we'll build a tree-house," he said.

It was a matter-of-fact comment and, knowing our father as we did, my younger sister and I were not that surprised. Of course. Dad had another project.

I have no idea how he came up with this plan. I have no clue as to what made him look at a utility pole and decide, "Hey, I think I'll a tree house." But Dad's mind never seemed to stop planning and designing so when he showed us his rough sketch of what our tree-house would look like, we never doubted it would be awesome.

It was going to be an A-frame, built on cross-beams which were bolted to the pole and braced by two-by-fours. There would be windows on each end and a trap door built into the floor for access.

I recall there was some debate as to where the pole should be placed. I think Mom would have liked it to be out in the middle of the pasture away from the house, but Dad convinced her it would blend in nicely with the maple trees in the backyard. He was right. In the summer when the leaves filled the trees it was like we were sitting in a tree and not on a pole 15 feet off the ground.

The pole was placed in the ground -- rather deeply as Dad didn't want the thing to sway -- and the next week the cross beams were bolted to the pole.

Everything was built with scrap lumber. The roof was plywood with round holes cut into it. Something that had probably outlived its usefulness at the factory Dad managed. The beams for the platform and two-by-fours for the roof were left-overs from the barn building project we had completed years before as was the wood for the sides. Even the tar paper for the roof was left over from some project -- probably our screened porch, which had been completed before I started kindergarten.

My sister and I helped Dad along the way by holding wood, handing him drills and looking for dropped nails.

The most frightening part of the project was when Dad nailed the plywood for the roof to the frame. Dad looped a rope through one of the holes in the plywood and threw the rope over a branch of a tree. My sister and I hoisted the plywood up and Dad swung around the open end of the platform, slid the plywood into place and drove a couple of nails in to hold it until he could use a ladder to nail the rest of it.

To this day I can remember holding that end of the rope, watching Dad grasp the frame, swing around the end of the tree-house, drive a nail in place while hanging by one arm and then swing back onto the platform. All the while I was muttering under my breath, "This isn't worth it. This isn't worth it."

But we managed to get the roof up with Dad remaining unscathed.

The project took several weekends, punctuated by late-spring snows, freezing rain -- you know, your typical miserable Michigan spring.

Just before we put the end pieces in place, Mom produced an old bookshelf from the basement, which we decided would look best under a window. We placed a lamp on it and ran a heavy-duty extension cord from the barn for electricity.

Every week that summer we would ride our bikes to the local drug store to scope out the latest editions of Archie comic books or Tiger Beat magazine and spend countless hours in the tree-house reading. We also spent many summer nights sleeping up there, listening to music (WLS out of Chicago) and eventually drifting off to sleep.

Years later, when our own children were small, Dad and the boys built another A-frame tree-house in an apple tree in the yard of their retirement home. I've driven past both homes and the tree-houses are gone. Ravaged, I am sure, by the elements and age. They are now distant memories.

I have searched all the photos Mom so carefully preserved over the years and I can't fine one photo of either tree-house.


Ahh, but the memories, they linger.