Clubhouse Trap

Our first garage was a long, narrow shed that was divided into several sections. The picture below shows it from behind as it was being torn down in early 1987.

At the end near the road (left side of the picture) was the large garage door to park a vehicle inside the garage. The next section was a small area with a work bench and Dad's tools on the walls. The next section had concrete walls and looked like it once held animals of some sort. And the last section (far right in the picture) was a two-seat outhouse. Guess which section we called our clubhouse. The outhouse.

We spent a lot of time in our clubhouse. The picture above was taken from the outside looking in. We held our top secret meetings and many of our valueless treasures in there. I guess it was because of those reasons that we decided it needed protection.

We rigged a long board across the inside of the clubhouse so when the door was opened, the board would drop down and land on the intruder. It worked in theory, but we needed to test it out. Fortunately (for us) Jill was home. So we set up the trap, called her outside, then sat back and watched to see if our masterpiece in engineering would live up to our expectations. It couldn't have been more successful! In fact, when Jill opened the door the board fell down, landed on her head, and knocked her loose tooth out. Obviously this sent Jill screaming and crying but in my mind and Harry's mind we had succeeded in designing and building our own security system.