Member-only story
The Fort
And the battles fought
Very few people ever walked through the part of the forest where the boys had built their fort. It was their private sanctuary.
They had built the fort over the course of one summer. They built it out of small logs tied together with rope. One of the boys, Sammy, had a hatchet they used to cut tree branches and chop off the small branches protruding from the logs. The hatchet was also used to carve the tops of the logs into points as in those log forts they saw on TV.
Preston had a shovel the boys used to dig the logs into the ground and Phil liberated a spool of rope from his father’s garage which they used to tie the logs together. Inside the fort they built a platform upon which the boys could stand and look out over the walls of the fort to spot any potential imaginary Indians who no doubt would some day attack the fort.
Rifles and pistols were carved out of sticks to use to kill the imaginary Indians. To complete the fort, a long wooden pole was planted in the middle of the fort atop which was fastened one of Donnie’s old t-shirts that happened to include the colors red, white, and blue.
After the summer of the fort’s construction Donnie got a real BB gun for Christmas so the next summer the battles fought at the fort were a little more real. Thankfully, no Indians were killed…
