Stories

THE SHED

In the 1950’s there were no plastic playhouses with snap together walls and colors not found in nature. Barbie was barely a child and her Dream House hadn’t been built yet. Dora the Explorer wasn’t even a figment of someone’s imagination. But we did have places to play. A blanket tossed over a couple of chairs, sofa cushions arranged like a giant deck of cards, an empty refrigerator box, or the carefully arranged copse of evergreens that stood in the corner of our front yard. All of those play houses were far superior to any of today’s plastic constructions.
My favorite play house was the shed my father built in the corner of our backyard. It was a small rectangle of wood and nails that Daddy worked long hours to build. It took him weeks and weeks to slowly and meticulously create a home for his lawnmower and garden tools. Those long weeks were heaven to Emilia and me as we took possession of the shed as if it were being built just for us.
On long hot summer afternoons, and navy blue evenings sparked by lightning bugs, we would act out the stories in the mystery books we devoured like M&M’s. The Six-Fingered Glove Mystery, Nancy Drew mysteries, and other stories we created ourselves were the fodder for our wild imaginations. The shed became our theatre where the stories came to life entangled in silvery spider webs and covered in sawdust.
I remember one summer night when the heat and humidity closed in on us and our unfolding mystery like heavy velvet stage curtains. We’d set up our dolls to be characters from the story. We dressed the set with twigs, leaves and old popsicle sticks stained with the fruity colors of the sweet frozen treats.
The story was underway: A secret and a buried treasure needed to be discovered. The shade of the apple tree, its seductive scent floating on the air, gave just enough darkness to lend suspense. We crawled over the cool damp earth, reciting the story, manipulating props and dolls, speaking dialogue for the characters. As the mystery unfolded we solved the secret, an old man hiding out in an abandoned house in the woods, and dug up the treasure made of old coca-cola bottle caps and cardboard caps from glass milk bottles that were delivered to the side door of our homes twice a week.
Dusk fell and the street lights blinked on like the eyes of wild animals, our signal that it was time to go home. Emilia headed to her house and I went inside for a bath, pj’s and a half hour of the Sandy Becker Show on our 12 inch black and white Philco television set.
A few days passed, rainy and sticky, while we remained indoors reading and playing out the stories in the empty drawers of a cardboard chest. Then when the sun came out we returned to my backyard with a new mystery to play out and solve. But our little theatre was now filled with Daddy’s lawnmower, garden tools, and my bike. The bare wood was painted the deep green of Robin Hood’s forest and the naked roof now had a coat of weathered gray shingles.
The show was over. The stage had been re-purposed and the magic was gone. As summer ended we made ready for fourth grade and bigger things to come. Though we still read mysteries we became more involved in playing out life instead of made up stories. The shed receded into the shadows of the apple tree and became a tiny little memory in a sea of many others.