Let's go for a bike ride!

I took this picture at the same place I took this picture of that real old tractor....as you can see if you enlarge this photo there is lots of old stuff at this place. But this bicycle is in a class by itself. I would not want to ride it...if you had a wreck and it fell on top of you, you would not soon forget.

But it makes me think of my brother, Robert. No, he never built anything like this but if he had wanted to he could have. When we were young, he was not one of those brothers that wanted his little sister to have to stay at home. He never minded if I tagged along with him and his friends; we would go to the dump and shoot bottles, light bulbs etc with BB guns, or we would head to the woods to find a grapevine swing. I know we did other things when his friends came but these are the highlights for me.

When it was just us, he was always busy with something. One summer we decided to build a tree house up in the thicket. The thicket was this patch of cedar and pine trees just across the road from our house. If you will enlarge the google image below, the thicket is within the circle...at the edge of the circle 'x' marks where our home was. Within the circle is an 'x' that marks the general area of where our treehouse was.
I know we got the wood from home...I don't know if mom and dad knew we were using it. But they had to because we had to pass right by the house with it. Seems like I remember being warned not to lose the hammer. Our tree house was built between 3 or 4 trees...I cannot remember if it was more or less a rectangle or if it was a triangle...but 2 x 4s were nailed to the trees. Plank flooring was laid on the 2 x 4s...and there was an area that had a second level....we more or less had a tree platform. I don't remember actually doing much with it after it was build, the joy was in the building.

Another summer we built a playhouse...there close to home and the barn. Neal was laughing about it the other day...about how no room was level. I agreed that nothing was level, but I still think it was something that we built it with nothing more than a saw and a hammer and nails. And whatever else we could scavenge.

It ended up with three rooms and had windows. One room did not have any windows, and where the other windows came from I do not know. I can't even remember what they actually looked like, just remember the light coming through them. You could stand up in the rooms. We got a seat from some old car and that was our couch.

When Robert started driving, at that time it seemed to me he was always working on cars. And always wanting me to help by holding something and that was the last thing I wanted to do...I can remember saying, "ah, do I have to?" One time he switched out the transmission on a car. I can remember having the feeling that his cars would just fly if he wanted....