It began in June with a large cardboard box, just roomy enough to house my wiry eight-year-old son, Nate, and a scrap of old tweed carpeting.
"The fort," as Nate dubbed it, was expanded throughout the summer to include several new rooms, each designed from salvaged appliance boxes
of various shapes and sizes. By the time it was finished, the fort curled like a corrugated snake across the entire lawn. Other kids in our
neighborhood added their own flourishes—round windows, paper awnings and banners, plastic pipes and tubes. (Whether these served functional
or aesthetic purposes, only the children knew.)
By the end of July, Nate's cardboard Xanadu had become something of a local landmakr. It was such a hot property, in fact, that you had to
write your name on the official sign-up sheet to be admitted inside, a bit like the exclusive restaurants lining Main Street downtown.
Since we live on a corner lot in a carefully maintained suburb, I worried that our neighbors would object to the ever-growing mountain of
boxes in our yard. IF you had no imagination and didn't know you were looking at a playhouse, you might have guessed we were careless about
storing our trash.
But no one complained. Other parentsw who had watched the fort's progress were amazed to see that something as simple and economical as a
stack of empty appliance boxes could keep so many children amused for so long. One afternoon, a local building contractor even stopped his
truck to admire the fort's design.
"Hey there, that's quite a place!" he called out to Nate and his pals. "Are you renting space in your cardboard condo?" But the kids insisted
they weren't looking for more tenants.
"Every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond its house a world, and beyond its world a heaven," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. We're born with
the desire to create a home, to build our own retreat. And while home can mean something different to everyone, the need for a sense of
place is universally human. To a small boy, a discarded carton contains unlimited potential for a playhouse or a fortress of his own.
But to the homeless man who camps near the railroad tracks at the edge of our town, a cardboard box might be his only refuge.
Nate and I frist spotted the shelter a few weeks after his fort was built. We were heading toward our favorite fast-food restaurant downtown,
taking our time as we walked along a gravel service road flanking the railroad tracks.
The two of us noticed a crude assemblage of large boxes almost hidden behind a tangle of wild thistle and Queen Anne's lace. Torn blankets
and soiled clothing were strung on branches nearby; long sheets of blue plastic encircled the base of the boxes like small rivers. Right
away, Nate noticed that the makeshift shelter looked remarkably like his cardboard box fort back home.
"What's all the plastic for, and why does the man live there instead of a real house?" he asked as we walked past the encampment. I explained
that the homeless man probably used the plastic to keep the boxes dry when it rained. But I didn't know how to explain the complexities of
being homeless to a suburban second-grader who is tucked securely into bed on a full stomach every night.
Following a heat wave later that week, a powerful evening storm rolled in. It brewed so quickly that my husband and I didn't have time to pull
Nate's fort into the garage. By morning, it was scattered across the lawn. Even "the turret," a sturdy refrigerator carton in its previous
life, had toppled like an uprooted tree among the soggy ruins.
At first I was secretly relieved that we could finally dismantle all the boxes that had taken over our yard. But Nate was fighting tears as
he tried to salvage parts of his handiwork, and I couldnt' help but feel his loss. Together we folded the sheets of rain-soaked cardboard
and piled them near the trash in our garage.
Since then, school has started again. But we haven't discarded a cardboard box without seriously considering its possibilities. And we often
wonder about the homeless man who had set up camp near the railroad tracks. The last time we walked there, we noticed that his shelter, like
Nate's fort, had collapsed in the hard summer rain.
About The Author:
Cindy La Ferle is a nationally syndicated columnist and the author of Writing Home ,
an inspirational book filled with memories from home. She can be reached at LaFerle.com
* This article is available for your publication, for a F-E-E.
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