Fort Wars!

Building a fort attracted the attention of our two backyard neighbors. They were both households of with boys in their early teens who were still into building forts and playing army. They were not the most socially adept youngsters. We became fort war enemies and stayed that way for several years. 

The Swiss are known for two things, their army knife and their improvised trapping abilities. Their anti-pirate trapping skill was documented in the 1960 Disney film

To defend ourselves, we built fortifications and spent hours building traps, barricades and weapon systems to defend our fort from all attackers. We took our inspiration from a pair of documentaries on improvised trapping; "The Swiss Family Robinson" and the Ewocks in "The Return of the Jedi". We built lots of trip wires, pit traps, and swinging log traps. They were, as I remember, pretty much useless. We also collected horse chestnuts which have a spiky casing, perfect for throwing and poking. Of course we had sticks, rocks and other primitive weapons.

Several times a week we would repel attacks by the older boys. They would mount a charge and we would repel them with a barrage of missiles and camel doo. It usually came no nothing but good fun. 

One Sunday the battle had become particularly heated, tempers flared and what had been good natured fun turned ugly. After increasingly violent skirmishes over the course of the afternoon I hit one of the older boys in the face with a stick. He chased me down, tackled me and was punching me while I was pinned to the ground. My five-year-old little sister, outfitted with a club spiked with nails, ran up and smashed it into my attacker's back squarely between his shoulder blades. It stuck in deep enough to stay when she let go, so pretty deep. He was screaming, grabbing at the club and trying to get help. He had let me go and we all ran.  We decided we should call it a day and stayed the rest of the afternoon in the house. We were a little concerned that the guy with the nails stuck in his back might harbor unreasonable desires for revenge.