Nostalgia-fest for the playhouse
Long ago (around 1984) and quite near to where I’m sitting…
a big project was under construction. From cedar wood to cedar planks, scalloped for aesthetics; nail by nail, my grandfather, dad and grandmother put together the wood that we christened “the playhouse.” 
A pint-sized rectangular cube on stilts for two girls ages seven and four, the playhouse provided adult-sized endless entertainment. With my sister’s love of playing “back then” (may I mention she is now a professional pilgrim out at Plimoth Plantation’s Living History Museum on Cape Cod), our backyard transformed from the modern grass and cornfields to the wilds of the plains in the 1800s, with the cherry tree on the edge of a ravine and the threat of the romanticized notion of Indians. Aprons ’round our waists and a metal bucket and dipper for hydration during the humid summer afternoons provided visual stimulation for our mental playground while our gravel driveway became a shallow river we had to run up and down to lose their trail.
The porch provided a platform for biological expeditions in the form of butterfly hunting with friends, or as a diving board of sorts for water games with cousins.
One summer, a wind storm broke a branch off of one the poplars in the front yard. Stuck into the flower garden, our imaginary landscape had a grand old tree to shade our log cabin from the east. Surprisingly, it rooted…
When we hit junior high and high school, playhouse evenings, weekends, summers and imaginations were pushed to the wayside for activities centering around friends and school activities. Slowly we moved out. 
Without my sister’s love of back-then, and without her presence, my use of the playhouse waned. Occasionally, we’ have a water fight with buckets and hoses, and the structure would serve as shield and shelter. Or perhaps we’d once again pull out our stilts and use the porch as a mounting platform as we had so many times in the years of full use.
When the black paint had faded to almost the wood, my dad, or maybe George, put on a fresh coat of white.
Fast forward to the summer of 2006, when I set up a 
reading nook on the table George had installed when he used the playhouse as a workshop for his forge. I took a trip to St. Louis, and forgot about the blankets, and was sick the week I got back. So, two or three weeks from when I had first moved in to when I went out to collect the blankets, a mouse had decided to make the house her home. So I left the blankets alone until the baby mice were exploring the playhouse and I decided the mother needed to find a new residence. I made the playhouse a scary place to grow up, for a mouse, and was able to watch her pick up her youngins by the scruff of their necks and haul them off to a new place.
Now, once again, the playhouse will be filled with minds and imaginations. Or something of the sort. My dad agreed to let my neighbors take the playhouse. Two days ago when I was working in the wildflower garden, the girls next door were out running around their yard. As they crept closer to the property line and hid behind some bushes, I heard the words “house” and “playhouse” squeak out quite often. I dutifully ignored them so they wouldn’t run away and hide.
Yesterday, the playhouse moved. Sawed off from the cement foundation and loaded onto some big machine with wheels, it has traveled to a new home. I was reminded of “The Wizard of Oz,” when the house floats up in the twister. For a while, no more foreheads will knock themselves on the top of the door frame with exclamations of “ouch” and other assorted word choices. Instead, I’m sure I’ll hear peals of laughter from next door. Follow more link for the video:
