Every Backyard is an Adventure: The Bloody Shack

I recall my brother, Ian, describing when he and my Dad discovered the "Bloody Shack" in "The Woods". When Ian told the story, it sounded like they were the first humans to hike through "The Woods" to the now infamous place. When he told the story, I was always jealous that he had the privilege of "discovering" it with my dad. In reality, the Bloody Shack was an old, abandoned gas station that was being reclaimed by nature-- pine trees growing up around it, roof and walls weathered and worn. The place had concrete walls and a decaying concrete ceiling that smelled like wet gravel.

My brother and I liked to go up there with sledge hammers, climb on the roof, hammering, trying to knock holes in the roof and walls--no we weren't trying to help the land return to nature, we were just angry kids with sledge hammers. I was probably angry that I didn't get to "discover" it with my Dad and wanted to destroy it, but we were both pretty angry kids. We thought that taking a sledgehammer to an abandoned building was bad--something we could get in trouble for--some sort of vandalism. In reality, it was a mildly dangerous place for us to take out aggression away from safety-conscious adults who would frown on destructive activities.

I remember building a stove with bricks that were laying around the Bloody Shack, lighting a hot fire in the stove and throwing a can of spray-paint in. We ran. It exploded throwing bricks and hot embers all over the shack's carcass. We talked about how cool it was. We didn't do it again. Eventually, someone bulldozed the building and carted away all the rubble.

--Children today are much safer than we were.--