Lowell's+Memoir

__The Fort of Amazing Awesome Times of Forts__ by Lowell

When I was 11-12 I hung out with my friend Luke all the time. We knew each other from our school, Wissahickon Charter School. We walked or got a ride from school to his house to hangout. His house was very, very old and falling apart. One day we were bored and wanted a hideout place. He already had a treehouse, but it was pretty bad and wasn’t that fun. We went to the the side of the house, looking around. We found a place that seemed cool to make our underground fort. We got some shovels and started to dig a hole. We dug all day for many days, sometimes with the help of his little sister, Thea. We found tons of huge rocks as big as a half of one of us.

Years before Luke’s family lived there, the lady who lived at that house had many dogs. When one died she would bury it somewhere on the property. While Luke and I were digging, we found a skeleton of one of the dogs. It was a small dog, but all the bones were still strong, all but the skull. We cleaned the bones and kept them. I took one of the many teeth and wore it around my neck for a long time. I did it because it was real cool to me at the time, and it showed that I was a part of the fort.

One day, we found that dirt fell into our hole, so we had to dig it all out again. It was easier because it was all looser than before, when it was all packed and filled with rocks. The hole was big enough for Luke, Thea, and I to stand in it together. We needed a roof, so we looked around for anything that might be good. We found some old fences and spread them out them across the hole. We wanted a water / green roof, so we put some tarps we found laying around the house and put it over the roof fences. On top of that, we put tons of dirt on that and planted lots of seeds. About a year or two before we started building, we broke a bunch of windows just sitting around. But we were lucky to find one or two windows still not broken. So we put them on top of the roof as a sky light for light on the inside. Otherwise, it would have been dark, too dark to see. We played and everything in there. We had Nerf wars and other stuff and that was out base. Then it got too small over the winter, so we went back to digging out more room in it.

We didn't go in it all winter because it was a year of heavy snow. Luke’s family took care of stray cats that never came inside. So when all the snow was gone we went back to it and found cats and dead cat pray. We had to clean it out, and it smelled terrible.We got lots of air freshener and sprayed it everywhere. We kept it in there just to be safe. When we cleaned it all out and started digging we found tons of clay and weird rocks. Then over the night, a huge wolf spider made a nest in there and laid eggs. When we got back to it the next day we found it. We did not see the egg sack, but we threw the spider away. But it found its way back every time in about 5 minutes, even when we threw it over the fence down a long hill. We did not kill bugs because of a club we had made when we were little called The Bug Club. We never hurt any bugs, and we would help them if we could. But after the spider coming back so much till the point where it was annoying, we just smashed it with one of the huge rocks that was just laying around. We found the egg sack a few days later and scooped it out and threw it over a fence soon after we realized it was the spider’s. A few weeks later after doing little things to it, it was done. We had a fort with a waterproof roof with plants growing on it, and it had a skylight, seats, and shelves carved out of the wall on the inside.

I liked this memory because it was one of the big things that we did alone. All the help I remember from adult was Luke’s dad with moving a rock. And maybe we got a little help from my step-dad, Caleb. Overall, I found that I enjoyed having something to do that’s fun with Luke. This is the one of the few big things we have done together. The only other big things we did that I remember is playing a game together for years called Monster Hunters and melting a bunch of metal.

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