The Greatest Tree House Ever

Big brothers have a responsibility to ruin things, but boy, oh boy, did I ever ruin my sister Michelle’s birthday party back in 1980.  It was an epic destruction on an unimaginable scale that came in the heat of the moment, and even though I bear guilt at the audacity of the moment, I also have a strange sense of pride. Like Aragorn at Helm’s Deep, I stood against a horde of enemies to defend something sacred: my tree house.

A year or two before Michelle’s birthday party, my Uncle Dan visited our farm for a few weeks. Having moved from the city of Sioux Falls to the rural acreage, each acre of that property was like a separate kingdom of Middle Earth. The most obvious structure of wonder was the big red barn, which had been neglected by prior owners and stood on the edge of collapse. But to a kid like me it was the Death Star.

My Uncle Dan was actually more like a big brother. My mom and her three older siblings were almost all grown when Dan joined the family almost a generation later (they’re all baby-boomers, and he’s Gen X). After my Grandparents’ tragic death, Dan became a cousin of sorts when he was taken in by Uncle Dave and Aunt Nancy, but for a few weeks a year, he’d turn into the big brother that I never had.

He left an immediate mark. Instead of getting distracted by the playhouse that was the barn, he saw potential: raw material. With the skirt of the barn almost falling off, we got permission to harvest boards. Although we had to haul that lumber quite a distance, we targeted a tree that’d spent decades waiting for an opportunity to become the greatest treehouse EVAARR.

In my imagination, it was the biggest tree that ever grew. In photographic evidence taken by an aerial photography company of the Willis farm—it was a big ass tree. It dwarfed both the house and the barn in size. It was a mammoth box elder tree growing by itself on the southern fenceline of our property. The trunk? It would’ve taken four or five  kids to wrap arms around that tree. 

Dan cut two-by-four steps that created a ladder on the western facing side. The wonder of that tree was not its height—yet it was damn tall—but its breadth. Box elder trees are scraggly. We had a thick grove with dozens and dozens of box elder trees that grew in all sorts of directions, but this old tree had branches that reached as wide as other trees reached high. 

About ten feet above the ground, Dan created the first of three primary platforms. For most kids, this platform would’ve been enough to create an epic treehouse. Once the platform was built, we had enough space for three or four kids to sit and do stupid kid stuff. 

Oh, but Dan had vision. 

Creating steps and handholds around the central trunk, we gained access to an entire side branch that led from the belly of the USS Enterprise to the engine rooms where Scotty ran the thrusters. This parallel wing of the treehouse led over the property line  and the tree swallowed up several rows of Steineke farmland. The thick walkway eventually grew so heavy that the branch leaned toward the ground, allowing us to descend like monkeys to gain access to the cornfield. 

Yet on the northern side of the central platform, another massive branch defied gravity to grow steadily upwards. With a few well-placed steps, we could climb up another ten feet where we built the command center. 

Board by board, we hauled lumber up into this higher crotch and created a platform up in the canopy where it felt like Planet Earth was a million miles away. 

When Dan left to go back to Granite Falls he left behind a magical vehicle with unlimited power.

Michelle was not as impressed.

Back in these days, my sister Michelle was a solid substitute for a little brother. She knew how to harvest food right out of the garden without having to go back inside for a meal (going back inside risked ending playtime). She didn’t mind getting dirty crawling away from monsters hunting us in the grove. Plus, she had pretty good instincts (for a girl) regarding which fallen branches would make proper stick guns and stick swords. She also had pretty good climbing skills and showed a fearlessness as we found nooks and crannies in the treehouse to store supplies, weapons, and ammunition against the Klingons or Stormtroopers. Unfortunately, she’d quickly lose interest and go back inside to play with her dolls and toys, and I’d often end up playing in my treehouse alone. 

Those summers lasted for-ev-ver. 

But one day, cars full of little girls began showing up. 

What was going on? 

It was Michelle’s birthday. If I were to guess, I’d say I was about to begin third-grade and Michelle was about to enter 1st grade. How do I know this? I remember her friends. 

Angie? She was a farm girl who grew up on a dairy farm, so she wasn’t so bad. There were a few others like Jana, who ended up being a mainstay friend, and others like Pam who moved away by high school. But the worst of them was MISTY!  

She was the Queen Bee who seized power on the bus and playground and ruled the pack of girls with an iron fist. She was also our closest neighbor, but rather than crossing the grassy fields of Rohan and through the woods of Lothlorien to arrive at the birthday party, she was driven to the party by her mother. As soon as she stepped out of the car, she had the most blonde curls, the whitest dress, and most ribbons and bows on her package than any of the girls. Even worse, she was literal. Seriously. She’d look at my pile of rocks, and instead of seeing a family of aliens that’d traveled all the way from Ceti Alpha Three to visit earth, all Misty could see were rocks. 

She was literally the worst of all Michelle’s friends. 

Within minutes, I was soon outnumbered by six-year-old girls. 

Luckily, I looked to the east, at dawn, and Erkenbrand and Eomer arrived to save the day. My cradle buddy Chris and his little brother Carey had been with me since we prowled the mean streets of West Mesa Pass in Sioux Falls, and both the Ludens and the Willises moved to acreages north of Sioux Falls about the same time. Chris and Carey could tip the balance in my favor!

Unfortunately, after trying to drink the entire bowl of fruit punch, we were immediately banned and sent upstairs. Luckily, there were still all sorts of cool things I could share with Chris and Carey. 

“Check out how to pop off these doll heads,” I offered my guests.

“Do you see this doll house? You can turn the doll heads into cannon balls that can knock down the walls if you hit it just right.”

While Chris and Carey were impressed, the girls were horrified! 

Emboldened by her friends, Michelle let out one cry of “Mom!” and I got thrown out of the house. Worse than that, Cindy Ludens separated the two brothers, keeping Carey at her side and kicking Chris outside with me.

Oh, wait! The treehouse!

I forgot all about the birthday party and promises of cake and showed my oldest friend the most amazing treehouse known to mankind.

I gave him a tour of the three different levels, showed him the stockpile of stick guns and corncob grenades, and transported him to a place far, far away from angry mothers. 

The serenity was broken by the sound of a slamming screen door.

From our vantage point high in the treetop, we could see a strange, white, wiggling creature heading in our direction. It baffled the mind. What could it be?

Once it crossed the driveway, the wiggly white creature gained resolution. It was a line of little girls, led by Michelle.

I was stunned.

These were girls.

Girls!

Outside of Michelle, girls didn’t understand what the treehouse represented.

They were going to ruin everything.

Dan would not approve.

Sure enough, they passed by the garden on a straight line to the treehouse.

I mustered up a verbal defense. Something to the effect of “Go away!”

They all stopped and looked to Michelle, who said something like, “It’s my birthday. I can do whatever I want, and I want to show my friends the treehouse.”

Chris looked at me in a panic.

“Don’t worry, my trusted friend. This treehouse is equipped with a formidable defense system. Nevertheless, prepare to defend yourself!”

The formidable defense system? My father decided to relive his childhood adventures on his Uncle’s farm by creating his own hobby farm, replete with a herd of sheep, some pigs, and a few cows. So one of the first upgrades he made was implementing a robust fence that led from the barn to a series of different pastures. 

The treehouse sat on the other side of one of these fences.

With Michelle and company all decked out in their party dresses, the barbed wire fence appeared as formidable as the Berlin Wall. 

Chris, sensing our advantage, joined in the taunts saying something fierce like. “Go away. Girls have cooties!”

I had a great wingman.

Unfortunately, Michelle’s wingwoman was the spawn of Satan. Control of the Tri-Valley Class of 1992 was in jeopardy. If she allowed Chris and I to defeat her, her power over these girls for the next decade would crumble. Misty doubled-down and advanced.

My jaw dropped. 

The girls delicately and systematically defeated the defense system. One girl stepped on the wire and held it down to the ground while another girl took hold of the barbed wire and lifted the wire, creating a little girl-sized space to cross through.

“Prepare for attack!”

Chris and I took our places on the ramparts and readied ourselves for the frontal assault. 

Since they were girls, our stick guns were useless. No amount of “pew pew” would slow them down, even when the imaginary trigger was pulled with one directly in the imaginary scope. Nope, Chris and I had to rely on the corncob grenades. 

These handy little weapons worked on both real and imaginary enemies. A corncob grenade was created by removing the corn kernels from the bottom of a cob to create a nice handle while leaving the upper half covered in dry corn kernels. Tossing a corncob grenade didn’t even require a whirling sound effect from the thrower—these suckers would make the noise themselves. The most amazing power of a corncob grenade was that hitting a body would send tiny shrapnel kernels in a shower that would rival later video game hits.

However….It’s surprising how hard it is to hit a first grade girl.

One good hit would’ve resulted in tears, and if we made one of them cry, the others would’ve likely retreated. But they dodged, ducked, dipped, dove, and dodged every grenade. Soon, the armory was running low.

“I need more,” Chris called out.

“I’m giving you all I’ve got!” I answered.

Unfortunately, we used all the grenades, leaving us with one last stash of weapons: our stick guns. We threw them from on high, but those dang girls kept making Matrix-esque moves to avoid injury.

The ammunition soon ran low and our enemy got closer and closer to the base of the tree.

Heck, we resulted in throwing bark at them—to no avail.

Defeat looked inevitable. 

In our years of friendship, Chris and I had never experienced such bad luck. If we failed, our forefathers would know we’d lost to a bunch of girls. 

At the bottom of the steps, leading the vanguard, Misty put a hand on that first rung nailed into the tree by my Uncle Dan. 

We had to stop her!

But how?

Looking down on our enemy as she took another bold rung closer to defiling our sacred domain, an anachronistic scene from Ghostbusters comes into mind. Do you remember the Stay-puffed Marshmallow Man? That’s what it felt like with each rung that Misty took. We felt the seismic reverberations as she clawed her way up that tree.

“I have a radical idea!”

One of us said it. 

It really doesn’t matter if I suggested it or Chris suggested it. The idea, while desperate, was the final line of defense that we had against Misty reaching that final rung. 

Chris and I had known each other since diapers, so the practicality of the idea bothered neither of us, but the ramifications of crossing this line nevertheless frightened us. 

We stepped forward to the edge of the platform.

I like to picture Misty looking back down to the other girls in a triumphant Nellie-Olson smirk. She was giving Michelle a birthday victory that’d be talked about all the way to being crowned homecoming queen. 

But when she heard the strange sound of two zippers unzipping simultaneously, her smug expression turned to puzzlement. 

Back on the platform, Chris and I each took a moment to relax our two punchbowl-sized-bladders. Let me tell you as a 54 year old man—a nine-year-old bladder is about as strong as it would ever be. At nine, we could split urinal mints in half, which is what poor Misty quickly learned.

That look of puzzlement? Well, it shifted when she looked up. In that split second, she likely gasped and perhaps even began to mutter the beginning of a thought: OMG.

But she never made it past the O in OMG. 

Chris and I hit her with the full force of two streams united. We blasted that smug expression from her face. That white party dress? Not so white now, is it Misty?

Screams filled the air.

Not Misty’s scream, of course, Chris and I made sure we drowned out her screams.

The screams came from the other girls, who while not our intended targets, certainly caught some deflected splatter as we forced our foe back down the tree. In a panic, the girls retreated with far less caution through the barbed-wire fence as it also exacted a bit of revenge by claiming a pound of flesh, a few ribbons, and part of a pony tail. 

All those little piggies went wee, wee, wee all the way home.

Victory was ours!

We did it for Dan.

We did it for snips and snails and puppy-dog tails all over the world. 

The triumph lasted for about twenty seconds.

Can you imagine?

Now, as a grandpa, I chuckle at this tale, but picture this scene as Misty’s mother as a pack of girls burst through the front door: screaming, sobbing, urine soaked, some were bleeding, some were missing pony tails.

While I certainly ruined Michelle’s birthday party that day, I like to think I gave her a gift of sorts. Shortly after this incident, Misty and her family moved out of the school district and I never heard from her ever again. So after Chris and I took our deserved punishment, I never had to avoid eye contact with Misty or her parents. We vanquished her, and in that vacuum, Michelle and her friends were able to stretch their wings free from the tyrannical rule of Misty (Okay, she likely wasn’t that bad, but my guilt at the deed has altered my memory to avoid taking full responsibility)

But that’s how I remember it.