A rival fort emerged near the top of the hill by the power lines in the fields.  It was probably more soundly constructed and it was completely enclosed on all four sides.  However, it did not have the height that ours had.

I remember that me and some of my high school buddies challenged the owners of the rival fort to a game of capture the flag.  The flag was a person from the other team that you had to rescue and return to your fort. 

What resulted was a fierce and no-holds-barred competition.  Not content to simply chase or out run us, the other team absconded Rick Davies and began to give him an ample beating.

That pretty much ended the game.  We treated our captives nicely though.  Despite the fact that they were forced to sit atop the fourth story where there was no guard rail, we provided them with efervescent beverages from my dad's green cooler and "gentlemen's" magazines.

Before we left for a standard Taylor family party (including Mike,Patsy,
Sheila and Barb who havent signed up for memorycrawler yet), my mom reminded me that we should give Mike his old 1968 jacket back. This jacket was given to us probably because he moved a lot over the years. The thing is fantastic. It is super skinny, brown leather and even has a spot to hide your marijuana (remember its a hippie jacket). Since we were giving it back I decided to go all out and dress up like a total desuche bag hippie.

Just look at the photos. The funny thing about that day was the fact that newsie682 randomly wore a cowgirl type outfit.

I think I resemble Scott Wylat from Stone temple Pilots in these photos. It was pretty funny. I totally had an alter ego when I was dressed up like that.

I remember that I had a childhood bully named Dane Fife. I remember that him and his sidekick Trevor came by my house one afternoon and started saying "Is this where you live?"

Because he was my bully and I thought he was making fun of my house I lied and said "No it's just my summer house". How lame.

But it get's even lamer. Dane clarified and said that he was talking about our mailbox. It was a very big mailbox and he was inferring that I lived in it. Very lame.

I remember that there was this one spot in the fields where there was a good sized hole. It was not quite long enough to lay down in but it was waist deep. There was a rusted out spring mattress next to it and we would sometimes bounce off the mattress and into the hole. We called the hole "Old Bessie". It was a landmark of my childhood and of the fields.

I remember that we used to have these toys called "Food Fighters". Kevin and I had a huge amount of toys. I think that we had just about every food fighter. These action figures were a staple in our catapult game.