August 28, 1979

Tuesday; I"m 15.

So much for lengthy entries.  As for that long walk, Tim D. and I went through the Kenwood woods, into the unexplored woods, down the old train tracks to Gypsy Lane, road up Gypsy lane to Main street and back to Tim's house.

I don't think I told you about the Kenwood woods.  they lie behind the playground of Kenwood school.  It is privately owned, but it is not fenced off.  You walk right from the playground into the woods, usually on the main trail.  The main trail connects into all the other trails, of which there are many.  The main trail makes a big U in the woods.  The first branching trail on the right leads you to the pond, which is usually empty.  Here hoods come over and drink beer and smoke.  

In the woods' golden age, there were many forts built.  Most were built by six graders or younger, but some older kids built forts.  The most famous fort is the Hippie Hangout.  It was built of junk, as are all of the forts; part of its floor was once a door to a prison cell.  The walls were piled logs and it had no roof.  In fact, it only had 2 walls.  The hoods used it to smoke and drink, but as like every other fort it is in ruins now.  The ruins and remains of about 5 other forts, perhaps more if you looked hard, can still be seen.  

One is Don M.'s old fort, which Tim D. and myself destroyed at a time when we didn't like Don.  Another fort, and the most recent built, was first started by Tim D.  and I, but we forgot about it, so my brother Colman, Gary M., and Bill and Danny T., all being hoods, used it as a hood hideout.  It was the best built fort in the woods, but that's because they used tools (stolen).  I must say that most forts were conglomerations of junk, without roofs, sometimes using trees and brush.  But this fort had four walls and a ceiling.  It even had a crude screen window and a wood floor.  After Colman, Gary, and Billy and Danny stopped using it some other hoods moved in.  Knowing this, and being anti-hood, Tim D. and I proceeded to destroy the fort.  

When the hoods came back, they wrote a threat on the wreckage: "your dead!"  Of course Tim and I had a wonderful laugh when we read it.  The fort has not been rebuilt since.  Other ruins are scattered about the woods like piles of junk.  The main building material for forts was sheets of metal and plywood.

Back then, the woods had well-defined trails and was much traveled.  But this golden age ended about 5 years ago.  I was in it in maybe third, and fourth and fifth grades, but it started before I got there.  Don and Tim had built forts before I was there.  For some reason, though, after my classmates and I got out of the sixth grade, except for the occasional  hood, nobody went in the woods much.  Now the trails, even the main trail, are overgrown.  The woods are unused.