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Written by Michelle Stone
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Monday, 08 December 2008 21:11 |
We lived across the street from a cemetery. People were dying to move in and be our neighbors. Down at the end of the block, behind the homes there, was a huge open space that the cemetery had not developed. It had a slight slope to it. It had young willow trees and a few Chinese elms. This was our playground. And our parents had no clue where we were. My dad had a bright loud whistle he could blast for half a mile. As long as we showed up when he called, my folks didn't worry where we were.
I was a budding engineer. The land was not ours but it needed to be developed. We built tree houses in the elm trees. They were nothing more than platforms made by laying boards across branches. We'd use magic markers to paint spaceship controls on them. I could climb and descend those trees in the dark, I knew them so well. The young willows were bent and tied together high up to form a gothic ceiling for our chapel. Logs were laid on the natural grasses in this sanctuary to sit on. Here we held meetings, made assignments, and then played our games of imagination.
It wasn't long until I discovered another use for "our" land. We needed a missile command. Over the course of 3 years, I planned, and my friends helped implement 10 underground structures all connected with tunnels and shaded pathways of live willows tied together at their tops. The command centers were dug down 5 or 6 feet. We'd ledge around the hole and lay timbers to provide support. I soon learned to use black plastic on the timbers before we covered the top with earth to provide a dry hiding place beneath. Each location was then carefully covered with replanted natural grasses and brush. No one could tell that underneath the wild growing willows and grasses lay a labyrinth of passages and hideouts.
One of them was very special. It was the one that I alone had built. No one else knew of its existence. It was the smallest but it allowed me to have my own sanctuary, my own place to hide precious things, to live out my very own fantasies.
I remember one of the best could only be accessed by a very long and twisted access tunnel. We really had to crawl low to get in. But inside, it was spacious. We could fit 10 kids in there. We had carved benches and candle niches in the cavern's walls. Someone brought in some straw and the earthy smell combined to make the place a true child's fantasy. My "best" friend Lindsay dropped a candle one day and the straw started to burn. 6 of us scrambled to get out as the air supply was quickly consumed. How did we ever get out and escape the fire and suffocation? I don't know.
We abandoned missile command when I was 12 or 13 years old. For some reason, no one ever discovered what we had done. The strong arm of the cemetery’s security had largely ignored us. Their time was better spent preventing vandalism to gravestones and such. So, missile command was fully operational, yet empty, for several years.
One day when I was 16 or so, my younger brother came running home, out of breath. They've got a tractor out in "the field” they are going to plough it! Yes, the management of the cemetery had finally decided to develop our special place. They were unloading a heavy machine and were going to destroy missile command.
A handful of us, the command's builders, stood behind a chain link fence as they unloaded the tractor. A mix of emotions washed over us as we realized our childhood fantasies would soon be destroyed. I’m sure my face washed white agonizing over what would surely happen. We did not anticipate the riotous fun we'd share that weekend. For you see, missile command was a giant trap for the heavy machine with each room it encountered.
It wasn't two minutes before it found the first and smallest of our outlying command rooms. The timbers supporting the roof failed and down the back of the machine went. Flailing like a trapped animal, the big yellow tractor was trapped. They hired a tow truck to come in and pull it out. Then they brought in a back hoe to fill in the hole.
Our friend pulled out some lawn chairs and fetched some cold drinks as we settled in to watch the drama.
The scene would be repeated many more times over the next two days. After the third or fourth hole, they realized that it would be most effective to keep the tow truck and back hoe on site until they were finished. The machine operators glared at us every time a command room or tunnel captured their machine. We sat there in lawn chairs and cold drinks as we laughed, reminisced and laid in bets as to what would happen next. We cheered when the machine went down. We clapped and hooted when they pulled it out. We booed and hissed when the back hoe filled in the hole.
They knew that we were the source of their anguish. They knew that a bunch of snotty nosed kids had slowed their plan. Their big machine was delayed in plowing under the dreams of our youth.
In the cemetery, we watched the fitting end to our younger years. We saw the funeral and touched the corpse of our childhoods. We had come of age. |
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