Agitating in the Elm

One day, when I was about six years old, my mother had a new washing machine delivered. It arrived in a huge cardboard box, which I immediately dragged into the front yard. I took a thick, black magic marker, drew a door and some windows on the cardboard, and used a box cutter (no TSA back then) to cut the apertures on three sides so they would open and close. Instant playhouse. Other boys would have made a tank; I had a giant dollhouse. At least until it rained.

Our neighbor who lived in the house behind us helped my dad remove the old washer to the driveway, and install the new machine in the garage. I'm not sure which one of them looked at the defunct washer and said "you know, we should take all the parts out of this thing, and hang it in that tree out yonder." So that's what they did, and in two shakes (or more) I had an enameled metal treehouse. To my dad, who had seen armed combat, the jarring sight of seeing an uncamouflaged gleaming white washing machine suspended in the lower branches of a large tree must have seemed a bit wrong, but our yard was large, the treehouse was at the very back of the lawn, and you could barely see it from the street. Besides, you had to go past two dead end signs to drive by our house, so random traffic was nil.

Washing machines aren't made for a dual purpose. I couldn't enter through the lid, because Dad and the neighbor had replaced the top panel and lid of the machine with a plywood square. Besides, I would have looked silly dropping myself in like a load of laundry. The rear of the washer had been manufactured with an open panel so that repairmen could access the working parts. That was the entrance to my new treehouse, but it required a ladder and, let's face it, the quarters were cramped. And what to do when my friends and I got in there? It was dark and pretty dull inside.

So the treehouse was yanked down briefly for improvements, and the solution was extending the floor of the treehouse so that there was an outer deck with more room to breathe. Now we had "base camp." Little boys are ingenious and resourceful. My friends and I collected any piece of scrap wood, metal, and netting we could beg or borrow, and raided my dad's shed for tools and nails. We worked on the treehouse until we had a nice clubhouse, and the original "room" was engulfed by a rickety addition. Eventually I had a three-story treehouse.

The little white washing machine morphed in other ways. It became, in the blink of an eye, a pirate ship, a haunted house, a spacecraft, a cave...you name it. What would you like it to be? The sky's the limit.

This was my home away from home, whether it was packed with friends or I was in it alone with my dog and a good book. I would hoist my dog up the tree, and we would wile away the hours - she napping, me absorbed in a story. We were in our own little world, but just a parent's yell away from the dinner table. My friends and I spent many happy hours in and around the treehouse, climbing the tree branches, playing matchbox cars at the base of the tree, and avoiding the horse chestnut hulls with our bare feet. The chestnut tree was barely twenty feet away, and let me tell you, those protective hulls have very sharp spikes that will pierce armor.

Little boys grow up and can no longer be contained by their yards, their streets, or their neighborhoods. My dog grew old and died, and I got a car. The treehouse was abandoned, and my dad eventually dismantled it. I'm not even sure when that happened. I was no longer made of snakes and snails and puppy dog tails. That's what little boys are made of.