The One and Only Kathy
It all started not so long ago in a woods not far, far away…
Mark Janasik is one of my best friends and has been since 1st grade. I go to his house a lot and each time is special but none as special as this. On this occasion, Adin Fuentes was also over and they had been telling me about a fort that they had built awhile ago in Mark’s woods. They said it was made up of a few sticks and was basically just a lean-to. Nothing too special but still pretty cool.
So we went to check it out. The three of us marched across the bridge that goes over the pond and headed to the woods. We walked past the shed only like ten feet or so and there it was. It was maybe big enough for one of us to crouch into. One of us, I can not remember who, had the amazing idea of “Let’s make it bigger.” That’s exactly what we did.
It was saturday so we had plenty of time. We gathered sticks of all shapes and sizes. After a short period of gathering, we figured we should get organized. We thought we should figure out who should do what. As a group we came to the conclusion that Mark would work on walls, Adin would continue to collect sticks and also assist Mark, and I would construct the roof. Now that we had figured out each of our jobs we decided that we should figure out exactly how large to make the new fort. So we cleared out an area under the pine trees and planned out where the walls would go and how to connect them. Once we figured this out we went to work. It took us only 4 hours to build this magnificent thing. It was awesome and when you have something awesome you have to show it off, right? We decided to throw a party, but first we built chairs and benches so our guests would have a place to sit. There was maybe 10 people invited and they all showed up, it was a fun time.
Throughout the winter we improved the fort and the number of people who worked on it grew to six. Basically the dream team, with the new additions of Gary Hansen, Chance Pestrue, and Jimmy Pierce were amazing. During the winter we would all head to Mark’s and just build and hang out. We became known as the SWS, which obviously stands for something top secret and if I told you I’d have to kill you. Besides the fort, which we named Kathy, some of our greatest achievements were stealth missions that we performed at night. A couple of these missions were code named Oscar Romeo Delta and Mike Papa Squared.
Oscar Romeo Delta, aka Operation Retrieve Deer, was our first mission ever and it was also one of the most successful. You see, we had heard word of a deer that had died on the side of the road, so us being courteous young gentlemen we decided to do the nice thing and go retrieve it. So of course that’s exactly what we did and we had to do this in the most awesome way possible. We planned for about an hour and we came to the conclusion that we would need a large stick, of which we had plenty, also we would need rope and Gary being the survival man that he is had rope on him so we were set. It was cold so we bundled up, grabbed our supplies, and hit the road. Since this was a stealth mission we had to be stealthy, so when ever there was a car we dove to the ditch and took cover. The deer was only a few hundred yards down the road. When we reached it we tied its feet to the stick and lifted it up and began the march back to Mark’s.
Mike Papa Squared stands for Mission Parker’s Party. Parker Smith, one of our friends, was having a bonfire so we thought, let’s head over. For this mission there was only four of us, Chance, Jimmy, Mark, and myself. We hopped on bikes and rode 4 miles to Parkers house in the dead of night. As we reached the stopping point our legs were dead, we were just a few hundred feet away from his yard and we figured we should drop the bikes in a discrete location and take the rest of the way on foot. We were dressed in all black, the color stealth. We had to crawl through tall grass so we would not be seen. After the crawl we carried out the rest of the mission. Chance had these muzzleloader pellets that just make a bright light and smoke a lot. We placed them on the ground and lit them and we ran around the back of his house while the people at the party wondered what was going on as they were distracted by the smoke. We ran out into the yard to be caught because we felt bad due to the fact that they were going berzerk. They ran us down and tackled us. Once they knew it was us they laughed and were okay.
Fast forwarding to the spring, we began working on the fort once again. We decided to extend the fort and make it humongous. Each weekend most of us went over to Mark’s house to build. We chopped down trees and picked up tons of other sticks that we found in his woods. We all had jobs, Mark’s job, Adin’s job, and my job remained the same, Mark constructing walls, Adin getting wood, and then myself working on the roof. Gary and Chance helped Adin cut down trees and Jimmy assisted Mark and I. After weekends of working we had accomplished our task. The fort is Goliath-like. In the end, the fort is 27.5 yards in length and a little over 6 feet tall all around. It’s awesome. We had people over to his house once again to show off our masterpiece.
We never thought that just building a fort could lead to so many great adventures.
Mark Janasik is one of my best friends and has been since 1st grade. I go to his house a lot and each time is special but none as special as this. On this occasion, Adin Fuentes was also over and they had been telling me about a fort that they had built awhile ago in Mark’s woods. They said it was made up of a few sticks and was basically just a lean-to. Nothing too special but still pretty cool.
So we went to check it out. The three of us marched across the bridge that goes over the pond and headed to the woods. We walked past the shed only like ten feet or so and there it was. It was maybe big enough for one of us to crouch into. One of us, I can not remember who, had the amazing idea of “Let’s make it bigger.” That’s exactly what we did.
It was saturday so we had plenty of time. We gathered sticks of all shapes and sizes. After a short period of gathering, we figured we should get organized. We thought we should figure out who should do what. As a group we came to the conclusion that Mark would work on walls, Adin would continue to collect sticks and also assist Mark, and I would construct the roof. Now that we had figured out each of our jobs we decided that we should figure out exactly how large to make the new fort. So we cleared out an area under the pine trees and planned out where the walls would go and how to connect them. Once we figured this out we went to work. It took us only 4 hours to build this magnificent thing. It was awesome and when you have something awesome you have to show it off, right? We decided to throw a party, but first we built chairs and benches so our guests would have a place to sit. There was maybe 10 people invited and they all showed up, it was a fun time.
Throughout the winter we improved the fort and the number of people who worked on it grew to six. Basically the dream team, with the new additions of Gary Hansen, Chance Pestrue, and Jimmy Pierce were amazing. During the winter we would all head to Mark’s and just build and hang out. We became known as the SWS, which obviously stands for something top secret and if I told you I’d have to kill you. Besides the fort, which we named Kathy, some of our greatest achievements were stealth missions that we performed at night. A couple of these missions were code named Oscar Romeo Delta and Mike Papa Squared.
Oscar Romeo Delta, aka Operation Retrieve Deer, was our first mission ever and it was also one of the most successful. You see, we had heard word of a deer that had died on the side of the road, so us being courteous young gentlemen we decided to do the nice thing and go retrieve it. So of course that’s exactly what we did and we had to do this in the most awesome way possible. We planned for about an hour and we came to the conclusion that we would need a large stick, of which we had plenty, also we would need rope and Gary being the survival man that he is had rope on him so we were set. It was cold so we bundled up, grabbed our supplies, and hit the road. Since this was a stealth mission we had to be stealthy, so when ever there was a car we dove to the ditch and took cover. The deer was only a few hundred yards down the road. When we reached it we tied its feet to the stick and lifted it up and began the march back to Mark’s.
Mike Papa Squared stands for Mission Parker’s Party. Parker Smith, one of our friends, was having a bonfire so we thought, let’s head over. For this mission there was only four of us, Chance, Jimmy, Mark, and myself. We hopped on bikes and rode 4 miles to Parkers house in the dead of night. As we reached the stopping point our legs were dead, we were just a few hundred feet away from his yard and we figured we should drop the bikes in a discrete location and take the rest of the way on foot. We were dressed in all black, the color stealth. We had to crawl through tall grass so we would not be seen. After the crawl we carried out the rest of the mission. Chance had these muzzleloader pellets that just make a bright light and smoke a lot. We placed them on the ground and lit them and we ran around the back of his house while the people at the party wondered what was going on as they were distracted by the smoke. We ran out into the yard to be caught because we felt bad due to the fact that they were going berzerk. They ran us down and tackled us. Once they knew it was us they laughed and were okay.
Fast forwarding to the spring, we began working on the fort once again. We decided to extend the fort and make it humongous. Each weekend most of us went over to Mark’s house to build. We chopped down trees and picked up tons of other sticks that we found in his woods. We all had jobs, Mark’s job, Adin’s job, and my job remained the same, Mark constructing walls, Adin getting wood, and then myself working on the roof. Gary and Chance helped Adin cut down trees and Jimmy assisted Mark and I. After weekends of working we had accomplished our task. The fort is Goliath-like. In the end, the fort is 27.5 yards in length and a little over 6 feet tall all around. It’s awesome. We had people over to his house once again to show off our masterpiece.
We never thought that just building a fort could lead to so many great adventures.