Much adventure abounded in our mighty fortresses

I had a dream the other night that my family and I were living in an old brooder house that was torn down years ago on our Minnesota farm.

My first thought was that I hoped my weird dream wasn't some kind of foreshadowing of how bad this recession is going to get before things get better. As I replayed the dream in my head, though, it dawned on me that I've had this dream before.

The ramshackle brooder house used for raising baby chicks in the 1920s and '30s figured prominently in my childhood because my brothers and I used it as our clubhouse. It had been vacant for decades, so we transformed it into Hillfoot Hideout. The password to get in (determined by my brainy older brother) was "electricity."

We wiled away entire summer days in that old brooder house. Its purpose varied, depending on the adventure of the day. If we played cops and robbers it was the jail. If we played "Army" it was the bunker.

Could it be that when life gets unsteady or feels out of control I retreat to those safe places of my childhood? A psychologist probably could have a field day with me and my dreams. Usually if I'm stressed out, my dreams send me back to Minnesota when a tornado is ready to touch down and we're running to the basement.

Once, after an unusually stressful day I dreamed I was home in Minnesota and a nuclear bomb had gone off in nearby Fargo, N.D. Like I said, a psychologist could have a good time with me and my dreams.

But back to that clubhouse, that safe place where we could wall ourselves off from the rest of the world. It was interesting for me to stop and think how much of my childhood was filled with clubhouses and forts.

In first grade, ample snowfall in the winter of 1962-63 allowed my classmates and me to build an entire snow village, with a main street and rows of forts on both sides. We couldn't wait for recess to slip into our snowsuits and play "house" in those forts.

The summer of my ninth year, my middle brother and I spent every spare moment in a treehouse we built in a sturdy elm tree in the sheep pasture. Another time we built a fort out of logs and branches and got stranded inside when the sheep came and we were afraid the buck would chase us. Our mother eventually rescued us.

Hay forts were a staple, too, in our childhood games. We had the entire hay mound to create mazes out of the bristly bales.

And who among us hasn't made a fort out of the sofa cushions, or thrown a blanket over the dining room chairs to make an indoor tent?

Even the Obamas know the value of sofa cushions. The First Lady said recently that she wants comfortable sofas in the White House, with the addendum that "you've got to be able to make a fort with the sofa pillows. Everything must be fort-worthy."

I hope kids are still making forts, though I suspect that youthful adventures these days more often are found in video games and not old brooder houses. Parents today aren't inclined to let their children spend hours and hours of unsupervised time away from watchful eyes.

They could get hurt!

Looking back, I suppose there was all sorts of trouble we could've gotten into by ourselves, teetering on hay bales stacked 10 feet high or climbing trees.

It was a different time and I'm glad I was part of it, because to this day I remember the rush of excitement of having an entire afternoon to retreat to the secret fortress of the day, and wondering where our imagination would take us.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com