Apple Box Boy

Across the Yeager backyard was a garage and a tired old shed. We were pretty sure that if we could get on top of one of the buildings, we would be able to jump from roof to roof, and maybe even make it across to the Carrol’s garage. We looked all over the neighborhood and couldn’t find a ladder tall enough, so I decided to cut a hole in Mr. Yeager’s garage roof. My Dad had a great saw that was pointed on the end and with it I cut a square hole big enough for a kid to climb through. I made a little holder that held the roof panel when we weren’t using it. Butch’s dad never noticed. Like my dad, he worked hard, and was often too tired to notice the minor changes we were continually making. Once on the roof we were able, just as we thought, to jump from roof to roof to roof. Butch said later that the skills he learned on the garage tops in our neighborhood helped keep him alive in Viet Nam. The tired old shed leaned in the direction of Tieton Drive. It became our neighborhood clubhouse and held many of our secrets until it was demolished or fell in during the mid 1980’s. I heard rumors that it was burned to the ground by some of the neighborhood kids. It was a miracle that it survived our tenancy. The building had two sections, one with a dirt floor, and the other wood. The entrance door swung open over the dirt and was not more than eight foot by ten. The alley bordered the back of the building which had a shuttered opening and the wooden floor. It was in this section, with the shutter open to vent toxic fumes, that we conducted most of our experiments. Johnny and I had gotten chemistry sets with microscopes for Christmas, so we quickly converted the clubhouse into the neighborhood laboratory. Butch’s Dad had a pile of old lumber he salvaged when he dismantled the front of his garage where we had cut the access panel in the roof. The garage was in poor repair, like the wood shed, and had to be partially demolished due to Dean backing his car into the southwest corner, making the building a hazard. The lumber was excellent for the shelving that held our experiments. I had discovered my mother had an excessive number of canning jars, or at least I thought so, which served as containers for our chemicals. There was a booklet of chemical instruction with both our kits and much of what we used was common in our mother’s kitchens. Baking soda and powder, sugar, salt, vinegar, flour and catsup. Catsup always added to the drama of chemical development. We had hopes of developing something dangerous and were only successful in mixing bad smells. “Be careful Jimmy!!! You mix those two together with that vinegar and…and…it might explode.” Truman and John still live in Yakima. I wonder if they remember and value our childhoods as I do.