In Utah, in the apartments by the park that mysteriously burned down, lived a big old honkin’ tree. It happens to be the exact same tree I climbed to prove that swinging on power lines wouldn’t kill me. It was a great tree for climbing. One day, we decided we should build a tree house in it because it was a cool tree, and tree houses are cool, so it would be cool.

We would need a strong base for the tree house. Back in those days, some parking spots used a railroad tie at the end of it instead of a curb or cement thing. Since big nails don’t usually work well in asphalt, the railroad ties were often loose, but they are HEAVY! I think it took three of us it took to finally get the railroad tie over to the tree.

No one thought that if it was hard to move horizontally across the ground it would probably be much harder to lift it in the air. So, lift it into the air we did! We needed the lightest person in the tree helping to pull it up because much of their strength had to be used holding onto the tree and guiding the top, so I went up first. Brad and the other kid stayed at the bottom to lift the railroad tie up, up, up!

I’m not a scientist or anything, but I’m pretty sure that gravity makes things come back down to the earth’s surface. As they were pushing with all their might, and I was trying to aim the tip of this railroad tie and help as much as I could, it seemed to get more and more difficult. Weird, right? I guess that’s just what happens when you lift things up high and start running out of strength.

The tie was pretty far off the ground, with Brad directly underneath pushing it up as high as he could. No one thought far enough ahead to realize at some point, the ones on the ground would have to climb the tree to be able to keep pushing, but then they’d be trying to push while holding onto a tree and it wouldn’t work so well. Strength started running out and I think me and the other kid lost our grip. The railroad tie went sliding down the tree and WHAM! right into Brad’s forehead! Great shot, heavy railroad tie thing! It blasted Brad onto the ground and thunked down nearby. I don’t know if it knocked him out, but a railroad tie weighs around 200 pounds, and it had dropped at least a few feet before it introduced itself to Brad’s head.

That was the end of building the tree fort.