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Stumpage Reports
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Thursday, March 13, 2003 :::
The Field
I spent the first twenty years of my life in a small town in Michigan named Clawson. It was a lily-white suburb a little bit north of Detroit. Most of the houses were built in the 40's and 50's, with the most recent development in the late 60's, which included our second house there. The town was all built up except for a small area behind our house. We lived on the only cul-de-sac in the city and the half block or so behind our street consisted of a vacant lot, locally known as "The Field."
I wish I knew the dimensions of the field. It seems HUGE when I think of it now, but it couldn't have been that big. A wide dirt path cut down the middle, north to south. The southwest quadrant consisted a handmade baseball field, basically dirt trails connecting pieces of plywood for bases. The town had really good parks and lotsa ball fields and I don't remember anyone ever actually playing there.
The southeast section was basically a flat field. One time we dug a big hole there, covered it with scrap wood and piled dirt on the top, making ourselves a nice underground hideout until the big kids came and jumped on it and caved it in on us. There was lots of scrap lumber in the field, and every neighbor kid, including me, went to the doctor at least once for a tetanus shot after an encounter with a rusty nail.
The northwest section was known as "The Swamp." This was a pungent slop of water, black mud, and trees. If any treehouses were built, this is where it was done. Occasionaly someone would catch a crawdad in the swamp. That was pretty rare, usually it would bring kids for blocks around to see it. Sometimes our parents banned us from playing in the field, or sometimes we were allowed to play there with the caveat "Stay out of the swamp!"
"The Rockpile" filled up the remaining corner of the field. This was huge pile of busted cement slabs. They were piled in such a way that a little cave was formed in the middle. Sometimes there were empty beer bottles in the cave.
The whole field was a site of many snake-catching, hair-raising, and arm-busting adventures. I always wanted to live in the country when I was a kid and am thankful I had this little piece of dirt behind our house. When I was around 13 or 14 they began to build apartments there. We constantly went out and pulled up the surveyor's stakes, but to no avail. Of course, the construction site was good for lots of adventures too.
Quote of the Day:
Being on our march the fifteenth day of July and destitute of all kinds of eatables, just at night I observed a cheese in a press before a farmer's door, and we being about to halt for the night, I determined to return after dark and lay seige to it; but we went further than I expected before we halted, and a smart shower of rain with thunder happening at that time, the cheese escaped.
--- Joseph Plumb Martin, Private Yankee Doodle: Being a Narrative of Some of the Adventures, Dangers and Sufferings of a Revolutionary Soldier, 1830
::: posted by tom at 9:56 PM
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