The Building of an Empire


448 East 100 South Orem, Utah
Behind our home in the southwest corner of the yard at 448 east 100 south there was an enormous pile of rocks. I think that at one time it was someone’s idea of a rock garden, but it looked like a pile of rocks put there for convicts to break up with sledgehammers. Joy said that we had put all those rocks there from the garden area. At that time the city would pick up anything you didn’t want from in front of your home. It was one of the services that they provided every spring.
A couple of our children wanted me to build a playhouse for them. They were told that they needed to move all of the rocks to out in front of the house. I didn’t think that they would or could do it, but to my surprise I heard large rocks being put into the wagons and taken out front of the house for the pick-up that the city was going to do. It was not just our children, but all of the children from the neighborhood. There were several wagons and they were like little worker bees.
Not since the building of the pyramids in Egypt has there been such a movement of rock and earth from anywhere. It took several days, but they got the corner of the yard cleared of rocks. The pile out front was about the size of one of our cars. Now it was time to start working on the playhouse. I wasn’t sure how to build anything, much less something that the kids would like. I know that you are first supposed to draw up plans, but all I could come up with was an outline 8’x8’, the size of the base.
I purchased four 4”x8’ posts for the corners and a lot of 2”x4” and some ¾” plywood. I would try to visualize what it would look like, and the next day that would be the part we would work on. I had lots of help from our children and the neighborhood kids. We dug the holes for the corners and cemented them in. The middle of the area was dug out and some gravel put into the bottom, as a base for a sandbox. We built a framework at the top of the corners and laid the plywood across it and screwed it down.
This is the partially completed playhouse
We built the framework around the top of the plywood so people wouldn’t fall down, put in a slide going down from the upper-level floor, put on a slanted roof to shade it and keep the rain out. We put chicken wire all around the lower level to keep out animals and then hauled in sand for a sandbox. There was a metal ladder that went up to the top level and a door going into the sandbox with a strong spring to keep the door closed. We painted the whole thing with redwood stain. Then we put a platform in the tree near it and ran a pulley from the playhouse to the tree.
It turned out to be really a fine piece of work. We later put in a pole, like a fireman’s pole, down from the playhouse. It was as safe as I could make it, and the kids really enjoyed playing in it. We also put in a pole for tetherball which wasn’t used as much as I thought it would be, but the playhouse was used for years. When our oldest son graduated from high school, we painted the whole playhouse blue with a large O painted on the back facing the school. It was right next to Orem High so it looked pretty good.

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