Did you have a fort when you were a kid?

What was it like?

that was damp, stinky, spooky. it was home. there was a little storeroom that went under the stairs. no electricity, bring your own candle.
having a place to hide helped me survive my childhood.

I made mine out of spare lumber my father had around the house. I used plyboard as the roof. I thought it was "Da Bomb." My friends and I plotted many an evil trick on those cootie infested girls from there. ;)

But it got cleared for developments, and we returned to our secret fort to find that the construction company hadn't rented porta-pottys, and the crew had shat and left filthy toilet paper all over our camp. That was a loss of innocence right there.

:o

I remember growing up in North Philly in the early 60's and sometimes the snow would be so deep, cars could not drive on the streets so we made tunnels all over the street, complete with lookout posts and the ever important defensive barriers for the eventual snow ball fights. Fond memories.

My dad and I built it, and I even had a firemans pole to get down from the upper part. It was great.

and moved in with my Eskimo doll.

My father bought my mother a ring, and he put it in ever larger boxes. The largest box was one a refrigerator came in. I thought it was pretty funny but after hours of opening boxes I think Mom was pissed. We had wrapping paper and boxes all over the house. Mom and Dad are no longer with us but I still have that ring.

I didn't think anyone ever did that.

My brothers and I used to roll down hills in refrigerator boxes. My father at the time was inspecting a building that had refrigerators or something like that. The things we used to do .... safety first!

one could get so much pleasure out of a cardboard box? I truly believe today's youngins are missing out on the little pleasures of life which make growing older a pleasant experience.

The part of the mound where the driveway cut through was extra high so that became the turret. We had snowball launchers that were these miniature catapults (made in Cub Scouts) and you could pull a string to make it fire.

but my older brothers at some time dug a tunnel and then punched out a hole in the floor from the bottom. I had to hold out a flag and surrender.

We also had a tree house in a big oak tree. We each had our own "rooms" and then we had a pulley tree mail system where we could send notes to each other with clothes pins and this pulley system.

about 5x5 with a door above and a "secret" trap door below it was great!

Best in that order

into the yard

We raided neighborhood dumpsters, etc for building materials. Tires, boards with rusty nails sticking out, etc. And lots of branches. It wasn't all the functional as a fort, but we'd hang out in it and feel cool about being away from adults, etc. Haha. And don't get me started about the ELABORATE snow forts we created out of snow-plow piles in driveways. Tunnels, turrets, walls, and plenty of ammo, all in preparation of an assault from an enemy that of course would never materialize.

HITG was an 8x8x4 foot hole covered in beams and plywood and concealed with dirt. It had a fireplace!

HITS was a tree fort several hundred feet from HITG.

Where else would we hide our dirty magazines? It was made out of wooden doors, scrap wood, and whatever building supplies we could scrounge up.

But I could make a pillow fort like no one else

:D

When I was a teen. We had new houses being put up all over the place, so we had access to a lot of stuff:)
We had a concrete floor (which was mixed with creek water..lol) and we had a hallway. When you first walked in, you could hang your coat, and even take off your shoes.
Then inside we built a brick "fireplace". I don't think we ever had a fire in there though. It was pretty laid out for what it was. We eventually destroyed it because one of the neighborhood bullies found it. In fact, he was just at my parent's house asking for me. He told my father he had just done 14 years, and is back home now..LOL.
He is a whole different bunch of stories.

And I also had my Bamboo Cave Fort, which was a cave in a grove of bamboo.

I want to be a kid again.... *sigh*

tree forts, ice forts down on Lake Erie, forts in the grassfields next to where I lived as a child.

sublime non-parental sanctuaries. :)

made forts out of boxes and blankets and stuff. then our dog would come and wreck it.

my property and my neighbor's. My next door neighbor and I put up some plywood and leaned it up against the trees, it was a pretty neat fort. Any time either of us broke something (usually we were together when that happened) we would hide in the fort. In hind site that wasn't a great place to hide because whenever we were missing they just assumed we did something bad and grilled us down at the fort until we confessed!

Good times, I was such a Tomboy, we would play war and GI Joes in the dirt in our fort as well. Barbies never did it for me, I'd much rather be playing in the mud than having a tea party...good thing my best friend was a boy!

And when it would rain, we would always make the couch forts with blankets and cushions.

both for reinforcement in key places and to provide a nasty surprise and a broken toe for anyone who tried to kick down the walls. I also built snow caves and tunnels. It was lots of fun. :D

Dad was handy with tools, and built us several playhouses. One was elevated, one was in a tree, and one looked like a pioneer shanty.

Since they were mostly in AZ, they were all very hot in the summer and unpleasant.

I much preferred my seat in the grapefruit tree in the back yard.

My brothers and I built a tree fort (in the trees, of course) in the empty wooded lot between our house and the neighbor's. It was high enough that we could look into our parents' bedroom window, which was on the second floor.

I was a tomboy.

They routinely shot at me as I went whooping past them!

some of our brush. He was about four years older than me. I went home and got a steel pipe and hit him on top of his skull. It laid him out flat on his back. He stumbled home crying and his Mom didn't even bother to call mine.

:shrug:

got over-our-heads deep in the front yard, so we built tunnels and caves too.

out of old piano shipping crates....it was a bitch to drag them home on a wagon but man-o-man did they make great forts.... :bounce:

Seriously, we had a 3 level fort made out of wood. We would get from level to level through trapdoors. It had carpeting and everything.