Old business:   February apparently happened.  I was there for part of it.

New business:  Lets talk about old things.

When I was a kid, I wanted a cool clubhouse.  My mother read books to us, often the Three Investigators mysteries, and I later took up reading them myself. Their secret junkyard lair is to this day unparalleled in cool clubhouseness.

Early prototypes spoke more to the desire than to the successful satisfaction of such. My brother’s first attempt at a tree house was a few boards across branches barely held in place, weak proof of a thin concept. (That time the tree was felled in a storm and crashed into my window, providing a treacherous scrambling path from the second story to the side yard was far more impressive.) But I still wanted up on those boards, and I still felt the sting of exclusion when shunned.

Later, when we moved, there was a small shed in one corner of the property. At some point during our years there I tried to claim the space, and it was found significantly wanting.  It also couldn’t compare to my older siblings’ masterwork of a hideout: monkeying up the back wall of the garage and across a perilously perched horizontal ladder to a well concealed loungified loftlike space, illuminated by one of those workman’s lights with the cage around the bulb and the hook at the top.   My memory from this early age is hazy, but I think they managed to get chairs and a rug up there, as well.  The cool kids were naturally drawn to such swank digs.

I still want my clubhouse.  I think about how my inner child could be vindicated beyond measure with the resources of an adult with an income.  I think the concept of the Man Cave is supposed to be some middle aged evolution of this same inner desire, but not for me.  I still want a cave fit for a boy.

Of course, there’s no point to a clubhouse without a club. That may have been the real downfall of my unfulfilled youthful yearnings. Whether it is secret handshakes, decoder rings, code names or a bitchin logo, the sense of wanting to be included in something exclusive seems to be timeless.  Having a flag is a pre-requisite to planting a flag.

I don’t dwell on this very often, but it seems that perhaps things like this, relics from earlier ages, still drive my ambitions of the present day.