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The following is the second of a two-part column originally published in Main Line Banter in 2012.
Last week, we reminisced about a boyhood shed that seven “backyard buddies” constructed decades ago.
The column detailed how we built a ramshackle shed as a summer “retreat” in our row house section of Pittsburgh’s North Side and mused about what we learned and did there. If you missed it, and would like a copy, let me know. I’ll email it to you.
As the late Paul Harvey would say, here’s the rest of the story:
Official meetings in the shed were less eventful than the parties. However, when one belonged to a club, one was required to attend meetings. Those weekly sessions usually were dull, but thanks to some neighborhood rivals, or angry mothers, or relentless weather, some meetings were more spirited than others.
Generally, one of those disruptive events was not enough challenge to our sanctity. It was hard to keep level heads, however, when being harassed by taunts of rival contemporaries, accompanied by a barrage of stones pelting off our fortress wall.
On those occasions, The Backyard Buddies defended its rights of assembly by opening our wooden windows and shouting: “Ok, ok, you Donkeys,” why don’t you go back to your stables?” When that suggestion failed to engender their retreat, we would unbolt the door, and run out to face our antagonists in the alley.
“Let’s get ‘em, Buddies,” Norm would shout. “Yea, yea, get ‘em,” the rest of us would echo.
Bare-fisted fights with our neighborhood opponents were typically short-lived skirmishes. Tranquility usually was restored within a few minutes. There was one sustained melee that ended only when one of the antagonists jabbed a dart into the small of my back.
Steeling over that incident, our troops picked up a few loose bricks from the yard near the shed and hurled them in retaliation at the fleeing marauders. The bricks didn’t hit anyone, but they did make a crushing statement of our zeal to defend our turf.
Obviously, the wound was not fatal, but it was a little distressing at the time.
Moreover, it was difficult to explain to my mother that it “was nothing to worry about” while she applied some awful burning stuff to the hurt.
Rivals aside, mothers, too, often did their best to upset our delicate balance.
Mostly by impatience with us to respond to their pleas to vacate our hallowed quarters for the merest of things, like food and sleep.
Most often, our well- developed inability to selectively hear, while busy with some game or the other, won out over those well-intended inculcations.
Occasionally, we cajoled by responding that we would be along presently, whenever that would be.
Pittsburgh summer weather was a different threat to deal with. It didn’t run down the alley, nor understand any promises; it just tormented us. Thunderstorms were disrespectful. Many a rainy day, we would patch up the tar paper roof and nail planks to reinforce our shelter.
Irrespective of our efforts to shore up our lean-to, intense rain would eventually find its way through the roof and walls and deposit its liquid destruction on our cardboard floor. Buckets and bottles pressed into service as rain catchers were outmatched. We replaced the floor time and time again.
Weather, rivals, and mothers created our principal discomfort, but there were a few times when our fraternity was threatened from within.
At one especially bitter meeting, while discussing the election of new officers, Bobby, our treasurer, got so angry that his name was not offered for reelection, that he yanked the safe from its insufficient mooring, ran out the door, leaped over the wire fence separating the yard from the alley, and told us all to “go to hell!”
About an hour later, after searching all the secret hiding places we knew, we found him, bodily subdued him and demanded the return of the safe and its contents.
“You’re too damn late,” he wheezed as Rege and Norm (who were his cousins) pinned him to an alley wall. He already had spent our savings and thrown away the bottle safe. We immediately imparted our disfavor in the form of a few punches that blackened his eye and bloodied his nose.
Norm removed Bobby’s pants, while Rege and I held him against the wall of the old garage where he had been hiding, and we walked away without another word.
Returning to the shed with the trousers, but without our trouser-less treasurer, we locked the door, closed the wooden windows, selected a new treasurer and discussed how to find a sturdier safe.
Playing Monopoly and poker were excellent diversion from the heat of long summer days and equally hot nights. Thanks to three kerosene lanterns donated to our organization by Walt’s father (I’m sure he would have if we had asked) we played far into the surrounding darkness.
One night, so engrossed in our game, we failed to see that one of the lanterns had set fire to the cardboard that separated our two compartments. Flames leapt toward the ceiling as we finally realized what was happening. One of us had presence of mind – I don’t remember who—to open the door and grab two buckets of water placed immediately outside for such an emergency.
We doused the fire, swept the water from the cardboard floor, suspended the game and went home.
Awakening from the memories of “then” to the reality of now on that drive through the old neighborhood, there was not a party in progress, no aroma of onion laden hamburgers filling the air, no shouting mothers or taunting rivals, no Indian Toby smoke seeping through the cracks in the wall. Neither was a playing card nor Monopoly piece in sight, and no lantern dangling dangerously close to a cardboard wall.
Down the alley, there was no young boy running home bare legged, black eyed and bloodied nosed. There was no sound of the Victrola grinding out the “Laughing Record,” and no trace of the round table once used to place beer mugs and shot glasses in Pete’s Corner Saloon.
There was only rubble – black and brown and red and gray — smashed remains of a ramshackle shed built by seven boys who laughed and cried, argued, and agreed while learning a little about growing up. An ignominious grave site of a former childhood citadel.
Shifting the car into gear, one last glance confirmed that part of my childhood had been wiped away.
There was only a memory where once a monument had stood.
The Last Word: Good day, good luck, and good news tomorrow.
Ray invites comments to mainlinebanter@verizon.net.
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