Did you have a fort when you were a kid?

[Blue Velvet]

Or a treehouse, or other special place to hide out and play? Who did you let in there?

I was reading a short piece on Andrew Sullivan's blog which linked to this excerpt (http://www.believermag.com/issues/200811/?read=article_meis) of an article.


I am, unabashedly, pro-fort. It is a childish impulse, I suppose, the building of forts. One generally constructs them out of pillows and extra sheets in the first go-round. Then you graduate to the out-of-doors. You go into the trees in an act of reverse-evolution, harkening back to distant ancestors with prehensile tails. But you’re also playing at building things, reenacting basic civilizational urges embedded in the species mind. As soon as you’ve built one fort, you try to make the next one even better, bigger, more innovative. I had a friend in the Hollywood Hills, where I grew up, who built a fort with indoor plumbing, electricity, mechanical devices. But it still felt different being in the fort than being in the house. The fort was an experiment and the house was just a house.


My brother and I had a great one, built in amongst a maze of tunnels we clipped out with my dad's hedge clippers — also secretly borrowed — in the middle of a huge field of six foot high gorse. You had to know where the secret entrance was... my oldest sister was not allowed to know about it. :D

And then, one day my brother told one of his classmates and within a couple of days, it was overrun by some kids from the neighbourhood, who pulled my curtain door down. :(

Fort two was a shed-thing down beyond the bottom of the garden in a vacant section. The roof leaked and it was cold. Some comics we had in there got all soaked through.... we lost interest in it pretty quickly.

[iBlue]

Hell yes. They may not need to be particularly sophisticated but Fort building is a childhood must!

[PlaceofDis]

i built the pillow fortresses, yes. kinda miss them actually. but thats all. no tree house or anything to run to when i got older.

[iGav]

Indeed we did. :) But they were called Base's when I lived down south, and Den's when I lived up north. ;)

We had a partial underground one, that we dug into some earthen banking behind my old house, complete with a spy-slit that was partially hidden by grass, so you could keep a lookout, a near constant supply of ammo from a Crabapple tree, and a completely turfed roof that unless you knew about the Base, you'd have never guessed what lurked below. :D

[Blue Velvet]

i built the pillow fortresses, yes. kinda miss them actually.


There's nothing stopping you building your own blanky and pillow fortress under the table, and hiding up with a pint of icecream for a while. :)

We knew some kids that had their fort built for them by their father. It had a hinged door and a padlock. I'm not sure it qualifies as a real fort if a parent built it.

[shecky]

when i was a kid, we lived on a dead end in the suburbs, so after it would snow the plows would just pile up all the snow at the end of the street, making a giant, dense snowbank sometimes as high as 10 feet. we would then tunnel into it vietcong style and make a snow fort.

it.

was.

awesome.

[iJohnHenry]

We had NO trees, and clay. (New subdivision)

But we did snag every large appliance box that appeared after a new move-in.

Many 'rooms' resulted.

[LeahM]

Haha, this reminds me of when I used to have a bunk bed and I would make a hammock out of a sheet, some times it worked, sometimes it did.

But where I lived we used to have wetlands behind out house, and I used to have my fort there. If you didn't come in a certain way, you would fall into the water (which was about 3 feet deep) I used to take neighbor's old furniture and put it in our fort. I let anyone in it, I just liked to play. Good times.

[floyde]

Nah, I was mostly on the invading faction, I did conquer a few of them though ;):D

[evilgEEk]

My first "real" fort was a snow fort, just like Shecky, but I grew up on a farm and we just had giant snow drifts from the wind. This fort had a main gathering room and then four other side rooms down a bit of a hallway.

It took me about six hours to scoop out, and then the VERY next day it rained. Talk about depressing. :(

The next real fort I made with my cousin/best friend who lived on the next farm. This time we were 11 and 12 years old respectively and decided to up the ante. We built the entire thing ourselves. No help from any adults. We weren't supposed to use any power tools, so we had to sneak out to the shop to use the table saw. We used leftover bits of wood from a large shed that was built a few years before.

This bad boy was on stilts about four feet high with a combo-lock trapdoor entrance. We dug some stairs into the ground and installed a retractable ladder. The fort itself was a six by six by six square with four shuttered windows that could be opened from the inside. It had two fold up cots (boards on hinges with fold-out legs) and a storage area for non-perishables. I can't even count the number of nights we slept in that thing. The creepiest though was when we woke up in the middle of the night to scrapings on the outside. Imaginations will run wild at that age and in those settings, but we finally got the guts to peep out a window. It was a freakin' cow! We built the thing in a pasture, of course. Heh heh.

I must admit we did a very solid build job on this thing, and it lasted a VERY long time. When the property that we built on was sold to someone outside the family they wanted to take it down but they couldn't easily dismantle it so they just burnt it to the ground!

Man, those are some good memories. :)

[jessica.]

My cousins and I had a cave, at night we're pretty sure other things happened there though. :x

We had pillow forts at home on rainy days and had an actual treehouse for all other times. It was good fun. Something about being hidden was so fun as a child. Come to think of it, it sounds like fun now!

[evilgEEk]

Nah, I was mostly on the invading faction, I did conquer a few of them though ;):D

Ha ha! That's awesome!

We had a few local kids (and parents!) try to infiltrate our fort, but as we kept it pretty well stocked with berries and slingshots people quickly learned. :D

My cousins and I had a cave, at night we're pretty sure other things happened there though. :x

Vampires?

[Dagless]

My pops made us an igloo twice as a kid, thing was tiny but it worked :3
Also had the one where you shove chairs together, pull out the cushions and such. T'was all quite fun.
Oh and one set amongst the bushes at an old playground (sadly it got overrun by chavs and the council had to remove it).

[RITZFit]

yup, I can still remember me and my friend from across the street make forts w/ seat cushions from my parents' couch lol...good times

[Melrose]

We had lots of briars on our property, and two very irritating neighbour children that would heckle the crap out of me an my brother. We'd take over a clump of lilacs and pile up the briars/prickers/thorns all over around the outside to keep them out. It got rather cozy at times.

Before that we had two unused doghouses stacked on top of each other that made a castle-ish type of thing - which sat in the midst of a clump of raspberries (more thorns). That was the best!

[EV0LUTION]

I helped my little brother build his. Its a damn masterpiece.

We still use the fort for paintball wars. It's built about 16 feet high with a catwalk going around the inside for the guards, it has 2 small Trebuchet's that we use for paintball grenades. We also have a lookout tower that is 28 feet high. It took us a week to build.

I guess you could call it a castle

[Queso]

Sort of. We would get all sorts of stuff out of the garage (milk crates, sun loungers, bits of wood etc.) arrange it all out on the garden lawn so that it made some sort of closed shape, then chuck a big blanket over it for a roof. All the neighbours' kids would also join us in there, so at times we could get 10 or so people in one "fort".

When you're six or seven years old there's nothing better :cool:

[erickkoch]

I built several using old cardboard boxes taped together, if that counts. I remember turning one into a space capsule by drawing buttons and control panels with crayons.

[Marble]

My favorite sorts of indoor fort was a series of sheets attached to a square floor fan. The sheets would bubble up making the perfect (airy) corridor or room area that you could then attach to the more traditional corridors of cushions.

When I was even younger, I used to like weaving a spool of thread from object to object in my room, creating a massive spiderweb out of the place that one would then have to creep around, under, and through. Drove my parents mental.

[psycoswimmer]

When we moved into our house 7 years ago (wow, that long!), my (current) room was used as a temporary storage place. Once it became my room, but there were still a lot of boxes in there, I made an awesome fort. I basically built a room out of the boxes, with windows and blinds, "spy holes", and secret entrances. I was devastated when it had to be taken down. :(

[BlackSnow]

Yeah... Pillows and sheets with my sister, than with my nephew.

[andreab35]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

Oh I used to live doing these kinds of things with my little sister.
We used to make forts out of pillows, make secret hideouts under beds and in closets... and we then finally got this indoor playhouse to play in...
Oh gooooood times... :)

[remmy]

I just about remember, long time ago.

The garden is very long so at the bottom of it my dad got quite a few old railway sleepers and built a platform around a tree and made that up into a sort of tree house.

We also had this sort of plastic tube thing, think of life sized lego/technic which you could use to make carts or houses with. :cool:

[Nermal]

My brother and I had a treehouse. The tree is gone now :(

[Gray-Wolf]

Forts, tree houses, caves we dug in creek banks, the middle of thickets that we cleared just enough for a gathering. Lots of fun. Circa 1971 the last time one was made.

[11800506]

In my (younger) childhood I made tons of forts. We lived in a cul-de-sac and so during the winter we made snow out of the snow drifts just like shecky did. Those were really awesome. We then moved, and about 6 years ago we got 2 feet of snow (which is quite the anomaly for the DC area) and we made a whole fort out of the snow which got piled on the side of our driveway. After we made it, the snow had melted and refrozen so it was all solid ice and it was so much fun to play in. For indoor fort stories, we once made a fort with all of my cousins in my grandparents' family room out of their couches and chairs and some of their sheets. We used some folding tv tables and chairs to hold up the sheets in the middle and we created a whole sort of guard system to keep people out who weren't supposed to be in their. It was really cool.

[Lau]

BV, that hedge tunnels one is a work of genius. :D

My younger brother and I loved this sort of thing and would make them at any opportunity. We could just about squeeze behind the garage (and climb up the fences and sit on the roofs) that was a fort of sorts that was always there.

We also used to construct hugely complicated but temporary ones out of an old ladder we were allowed to play as a climbing frame, and then use bits of wood, blankets and, much to our parents' fury, the nets off the strawberries (this made it army like and was entirely essential).

As young teenagers my friends and I used to sit in a field down by the railway line, secretly, in the corn (or whatever it was) and were hidden from view by it being too tall. However, I realised we weren't so subtle as I was on the train and saw there was a huge hole in the field, clearly visible. :o

Later, we found a hole in the brambles by the side of the same field and used to sit in there and do all the secretive things that teenagers do like smoking dodgy Old Holborn rollups and the like. :p Twas our special place and we took a few bits and pieces down there to sit on and stuff. Sadly, a while later, my two best friends went there and took a massive and calculated overdose, again, because it was secret and safe and it was our place. (By a series of lucky events, they ended up being ok, and are now splendid twenty-eight year olds that I love to bits.)

A couple of years later I went back (none of us ever had gone back after that) and there was still paracetamol blister packs all over the ground. I don't think anyone else had ever found it. It was really sad and strange to go back and see all that and think of them there doing that by themselves.

Still, thinking about forts whilst writing this makes me think how important they were – at all the stages of being a kid there were always somewhere safe where there weren't adults, that you made the choice of how you used it and how it looked.

I actually wonder if a lot of the sheds/workshops/home offices on this earth are really just a fort substitute, where you can hide from the other adult in the house. ;)

[Schtumple]

I used to cut massive holes in our hedges at the back of our garden, boxes, hanging duvets, seriously, you name it, I could, and/or attempted to build a fort using it :p

[Iscariot]

Boy, did I ever. And when I build a fort, I do it right. I used a brand new wood shipping crate which I painted, built a proper door w/lock, shingled roof, I even built an attic! I recessed a pair of lights in a custom fixture that slid in and out of place as the door to the attic, cut out a hole and built a sliding plexiglass window, and it was furnished with shelves, a table, a couch, and a stereo. After I outgrew it it was passed on to my sister, and after she outgrew it my parents used it as a shed for years. It was a sturdy sucker too, you could go ahead and stand right on the roof and never have to worry about it collapsing.

[Prof.]

Me and my bro had bunk beds so we just put up a blanket to cover up the one open side. :cool:

[Big-TDI-Guy]

Forts, my god, how time has passed. :D

There was an abandoned car scrapyard about 1/2 mile into the woods behind my folks old place. Man on man did we have some kick@$$ building supplies.

And we called ours a "base" as well. No girls allowed. ;)

[mgguy]

My brother and I had a great fort when we were in our early teens. It was in Folsom, California where there was a lot of gold mining in the 1850's. The fort was within a deep cave that started its entrance at the apex of two perpendicular 40-foot trenches that were dug out by the early Chinese laborers-miners. About 200 feet within the cave was a fairly large hollowed out space from which we created a sort-of living room with benches dug into the sides to sit on. Its a wonder that our digging didn't bring the whole thing crashing down upon us. We brought in flashlights and lanterns and played cards and other games and ate goodies. Fun times. The cave is now a protected historic site and no one is allowed to enter it.

[toolbox]

Yeah we did, but they were called "bases", Our one was in the bush out the back of our house, up in the trees - Ah those were the days not a care in the world!

[dmr727]

http://static.desktopnexus.com/wallpapers/9326-bigthumbnail.jpg

[doubleohseven]

I never built an outside fort before, but I remember that my sister and I would get a long blanket and create a roof between a lounge and an armchair, or two chairs. On the inside we'd have heaps of cushions for support. They were the good 'ol days. :rolleyes:

[ski2moro]

Our fort was down a hill full of honeysuckle bushes. We had more fun building it than anything. We wove grape vines around small trees to make short walls. It was totally hidden from view. You could be 5 feet away and if you didn't know it was there, you couldn't see it. I can still remember the earthy smell.

At the top of OUR hill, there was a little clearing off the street where the local boys would park with their girlfriends after dark. We had more fun waiting for the car windows to fog up and then going up to the cars, making noises, tapping on the windows and running away to the safety of the fort. God, we were obnoxious.

With all the parental paranoia about stranger abductions, I wonder if kids still have all the fun we had playing outside after dark, building forts, playing at the creek, hiding out, etc.

[Dagless]

Boy, did I ever. And when I build a fort, I do it right. I used a brand new wood shipping crate which I painted, built a proper door w/lock, shingled roof, I even built an attic! I recessed a pair of lights in a custom fixture that slid in and out of place as the door to the attic, cut out a hole and built a sliding plexiglass window, and it was furnished with shelves, a table, a couch, and a stereo. After I outgrew it it was passed on to my sister, and after she outgrew it my parents used it as a shed for years. It was a sturdy sucker too, you could go ahead and stand right on the roof and never have to worry about it collapsing.

Heh, slightly more abitious than one me and my brother made. Our back garden was being 'built' at the time and we had stacks of bricks. We put a big sheet of metal ontop of the bricks and stuck a chair on it, then covered it with a tarpaulin that was drapped over 2 wooden planks in the ground to act as a doorway. Was bloody ace and looked like a 2 floor wigwam thingy. But saw a spider in there and never went back in.

[esco]

I always had a for in the garage made out of shoe-boxes. I had to crawl on my stomach to get through it. My mom always took it down and put the shoe boxes away, but i always rebuilt it. I think the best part was the "secret exit" that I had, which was basically a hole covered by a basketball.

I wish I could just build forts all day like in the old days...:(

[imac/cheese]

What a wonderful thread! It brings back so many memories.

I had more forts than I can remember. The best was a hedgerow fort carved out of briars and underbrush on the farm adjacent to my best friends home. The maze to crawl into the fort was easily defended and the roominess inside was deceptive. We had another one on stilts with a trap door, one in my barn, one in a tree overhanging a creek with a great rope swing, and one in an old pickup-truck camper top. I made temporary forts in my bedroom every chance I got with the most elaborate one covering every inch of my bedroom floor and extending up into the attic (for a quick escape).

We also made dozens of snow forts and snow tunnels. I can remember times when there would be only 6" of snow, so we would make giant snow balls (like we were going to make a snowman) and line them up to carve them into tunnels and rooms. There would be no snow left on the ground for several acres around our fort.

[SLC Flyfishing]

I was nearly killed in two of mine growing up. The first one we tunneled through a huge earth pile next to a foundation of a house that was being built in our neighborhood. We even took scrap wood from the trash piles outside of the other houses that were being built and fortified our tunneling mine style. One afternoon I went in there after it had been raining fairly hard and when I bumped the wall the whole thing caved in, wood and all. Luckily I was near the outside so I was able to get myself out since no one else was around.

A similar thing happened in a fort we constructed in a snow pile left behind by the snow plow. The pile was cone shaped and about 15 feet tall and maybe 20 or so feet across at the base. We tunneled inside the base and I climbed in and began hollowing out a huge room when it collapsed on me and my friends had to dig me out.

Scary stuff.

SLC

[leekohler]

Of course! They were really fun. But they fell over a lot.

The best were makeshift tents made from old blankets and such. We were always immensely disappointed when rain came though them. ;)

[dukebound85]

i always made forts with blankets and chairs/sofas/ etc when i was little

fun times :)

thinking about it, i guess i could still make myself a fort........

[ezzie]

ah, the good old days. :) not counting all the bamboo forts my cousin and i made behind my grandparents' house, i had one "real" fort and one that my dad built for me.

the "real" fort was built between 3 trees...it had a 2x4 frame with plywood walls and a leaky plywood roof covered with a tarp. one day my dad brought me home a piece of plexiglass, so i put in a window. he did all my cutting and helped me with planning, but measurements and assembly were all mine. i believe i was 8 at the time. i only smashed my thumb with the hammer twice.

when that fort rotted and collapsed, my dad built a nice two-story thing with a climbing wall and a fireman's pole. it was in that fort that my friend and i played our silly little "prairie days" game. :o we hunted for wild berries and brought water (from the swimming pool, of course) upstairs in a bucket via a pulley system for hand and clothes washing. we took our game very seriously...

and of course neither my little brother or hers was allowed. when they tried to come around we threatened to pelt them with rocks, which of course we had brought upstairs in the pulley bucket. :D

[redwarrior]

Uh, I stuck to the ones made with chairs and sheets and blankets in the living room.:o

My brother, on the other hand, made himself quite a nice cave in the side of a red clay bank (Georgia). It was all good until a torrential downpour came up, and he and his friends took refuge in it for shelter. It collapsed on them. He came home literally painted red! It was great for me, the little sister. I laughed hysterically as my mother made him strip to nothing and hosed him off on the back porch.:p