Little House on the Prairie

Staking out a claim for myself!

Not long after coming up short in my diligent search for a new hideout within the confines of the church parsonage, I decided it was time to venture into the great outdoors and continue exploring various options for a prime piece of real estate to call my own.

While sauntering to the opposite side of the two-car garage which stood behind our Cape Cod-style house, this adventurous stripling possessed the same pioneer spirit as Charles Ingalls when he built a simple log cabin to provide shelter for his little family out on the Kansas prairie in Osage territory.

Eureka!

With the wide-open space on the backside of the quarter city block on the north side of Ellwood City, I was more determined than ever to erect my very own little house on the prairie while sitting atop the buckboard of an imaginary covered wagon.

Where could I find a forest to cut down a few trees?

Since the nearest wooded area was at the very top of North Street where the Baney family – who attended our church – lived, this excited sixth grader decided it was much more sensible to procure my building materials from somewhere a little closer to home; so, I began inspecting a rather large woodpile stacked up against the outside of the cinderblock outbuilding.

In addition, I effortlessly opened one of the horizontal sliding garage doors as the wood panels slid along a mounted track on the side wall prior to examining another stack of timber that was lying next to the discarded sections of my former clubhouse.

It was a pioneer’s dream!

Between the pair of makeshift lumber yards at my disposal, I had plenty of wood to choose from without the need to cut down a single tree for the monumental project which would undoubtedly make the greeniacs happy.

Who was I kidding?

Considering I was a ninety-pound weakling, it would’ve probably taken me an entire day just to cut down a single tree, because my name most definitely wasn’t Paul Bunyan; so, I was jumping for joy at my good fortune.

The next item on my unrealistic agenda was to select the cream of the crop – chunky wood beams which resembled the appearance of logs – for this massive undertaking; but since the bar was set a little too high, I eventually settled for anything that was roughly six feet in length.

When this would-be construction worker attempted to pull out a prime slab from the stack of mismatched boards, I remarkably managed to jump out of harm’s way before it came crashing down to the cement floor with a loud noise stirring up a cloud of dust in the aftermath.

What a colossal mess!

Although it took the remainder of the afternoon to neatly stack each and every piece of wood back to its original position, my little unforeseen calamity actually made it a whole lot easier to choose the very best pieces of timber for the lofty endeavor.

Upon coming indoors to the sound of the triangular-shaped dinner bell hanging on the back porch, it came as no surprise when the dark-haired brunette directed me to the first-floor half-bath for a good old-fashioned face scrubbing; but I was totally shocked she didn’t conduct an impromptu water baptism in the kitchen sink with the thick layer of dirt and grime covering my entire body.

Of course, I was the first youngling to take a bath once the evening meal was concluded.

Due to the fact that the following day was the sabbath, I had to endure the hardship of attending to a few obligations – Sunday school, a morning worship service and one prolonged family dinner – prior to returning to the arduous task of building my very own private sanctuary out on an imaginary Kansas prairie.

All things considered, I was well on my way to completing the ingenious plan with each of the carefully chosen timbers laid out on the lawn in four sections around a center square which had already been pieced together for the wooden structure’s foundation.

As the midday sun slowly moved across a cloudless sky making its way toward the western horizon, beads of perspiration dripped from my brow as I methodically stacked each layer of makeshift beams on top of one another like a giant jigsaw puzzle until the last piece was gleefully put into place, thereby completing the finished product.

“This is a pretty nice log cabin, if I do say so myself,” I contemplated while scaling one of the shaky walls to take a gander at the inside. “If I can figure out how to mix up a batch of chinking, I’ll be able to fill in these gaps between the boards; and then it’ll be time to put in a door and a couple windows to make this a secluded retreat.”

However, those seemingly insignificant details were the least of my worries when the entire structure collapsed on top of me while attempting to climb back to safety.

It’s a good thing I had God-fearing parents who wholeheartedly believed in the protection of the Almighty!

Because my guardian angel was definitely looking out for me when a good Samaritan – the neighbor guy who lived in the alley across from our cinderblock garage – heard my desperate cries for help and came running to my rescue as he miraculously pulled me from the wreckage virtually unharmed; whereupon I was left with a pile of rubble that needed to be cleaned up before it was time for the blond-haired minister to mow the grass the following Friday afternoon.

Recalling the last chapter in the third book – Little House on the Prairie – written by Laura Ingalls Wilder, her family was forced to leave their home in Kansas upon discovering it was built on the Osage reservation; so, just like that little log cabin, my fortress became a distant memory from another time and place as I went back to the drawing board once again.