Reporter: Something tells me you're dancing around
the guts of your experiences in the woods. Playing among the toxic waste, well
who hasn't? Most people do that without having the slightest idea, even today.
Finding a dead dog, well, boohoo. Finding a suitcase. Big yawn. Let's get
something that will keep the readers awake. I'm about to snooze, myself. Let's
go. Get off the dime . . .
Hawkinson: How many beers have you had?
Reporter: Enough to know I should be recording this
interview, which I am doing. Now don't waste my tape. My beer is getting warm.
Here I go--I'm pushing the RECORD button.
Hawkinson: You were nicer a few minutes ago . . .
Reporter: (eyes a little blurry at this point)
Hawkinson: Okay. I really haven't talked about what
we neighborhood kids did while in the woods. Let me preface this by saying that
no matter what we did, it always ended up in a struggle for dominance.
Cooperation was a word for girls when I was a kid. Sissies. Wimps. All the
rest. When we organized into our gangs, someone always ended up in charge. That
was just the way it was back then. In a way, it was a competition to see who
would end up the ALPHA rotten kid--at least for a day or so. These titles
tended to be fluid, depending upon the situation. Most of the time it was a
title shared by my older brother or his arch nemesis three doors down.
One challenge was to see who could dominate the neighborhood’s
limited tree real estate in vacant lots. It was Donald Trump before anyone knew
Donald Trump. It was about arboreal domination, not just to build the largest
tree house but to monopolize entire acres—“zoning
out” anyone else from even competing. It was corporate-cutthroat before we had
ever heard of the term. And my brother was good at it.
My brother was an excellent tree-house builder, having recruited
about half the neighborhood, including me, to help him find, gather, transport,
and cut the various odd-sized pieces, and assist him with the overall framing
and finishing work. Where the materials came from was a question no one--and I
mean, NO ONE--was supposed to say.
My brother was also less than a good role
model as a boss--you worked for him until he said you could quit. No
exceptions. If you tried to sneak off, he'd either threaten you (which, coming from him, worked
for most kids), throw a few sizable chunks of lumber at you (and if he wanted
to clip the side of your head, he had an uncanny chunk-throwing aiming
ability), or demand that the other kids pile on you and beat you to a
pulp; lack of cooperation to follow his orders always placed them next in line to be beaten into a pulp. Overall, labor-management relations were a little
less than progressive.
In the end, however, my brother's tree house was an
architectural tour de force: completely walled in from the weather, a small
window for tracking the movements of opposing tree-house builders, a rain-proof
ceiling, and a chunk of carpeting for comfortable seating. The door, which
entered through the floor, was also secured by a padlock. Tree house Magazine would have given it Five Stars if it were
aware of its presence and if it were a publication that actually had existed.
Now if all that sounds a little boring . . .
Reporter: It does.
Hawkinson: Then this should grab your attention. As I just mentioned, as the CEO tree house builder, my brother abhorred any attempt by other neighborhood
kids to build their own tree houses anywhere near his.
When he sensed a threat, he’d immediately send out the general
orders:
First, threaten the intruders with massive bodily injury if they
even thought about building a tree house within a mile of ours.
Second, throw rocks at them if they refused to comply--and a lack
of compliance was common because, while you'd think otherwise, threatening
massive bodily injury was something most of us heard on a regular basis. It
just didn't have the kind of intimidation factor to produce any positive
results, especially if those hurtling the threats had yet to exceed a yard
stick in height. The problem with throwing rocks is that the enemy could also return
the favor, and with poor aim a given, and rocks ricocheting off trees, a rock
war could get messy very fast. Sometimes our own rocks boomeranged back to us,
barely missing our faces.
Third, our boss, my brother, would order us to steal the building
supplies from our enemies' tree houses, supplies which, by the way, had already
been stolen once or twice before. If the lumber were reasonably good, my
brother would incorporate it into his tree house, usually adding a
multi-leveled deck or something similar along those lines. He had a pretty good imagination in tree house design.
Fourth, and this happened only occasionally, if our enemies
persisted in continuing to build their own tree houses in my brother’s territory, my brother and his gang
of lackeys would sneak into the woods past everyone's curfew, with a can of gasoline, and torch the enemy's work-in-progress. (I can't speak in detail about what exactly happened or who was responsible for dropping the match. I was never involved; my level of rottenness
had not reached a threshold for this type of activity (maybe my brother was protecting me after all.))
The next morning both the tree house and the tree looked like
charcoal sketches: A scene right out of Lord of the Flies. And for some reason, no one ever called the fire department.
(After all the messes kids left, and the constant racket from hammers pounding
and kids yelling orders, screaming, and occasionally swearing in frustration, I
think neighbors were thankful to see a few of the tree houses removed.) Anyway,
the strategy proved effective, and my brother's reign lasted for three
years--until he got too old for tree houses and moved on to girls. (The kid
that replaced him ended up accidentally burning down his own tree house. He
later killed three people in an industrial accident. Some things never change.)
By the way, as a bad boy, a natural bully, with strong leadership
and organization skills, my brother ended up getting a lot of girls. A lot of girls. I admired him for that. Some of his girlfriends, with bodily aromas that often sent me into another world, would pat me on the head and comment on my "cute" stature. I didn't care so much for that. Just an
average rotten little kid myself, I was also not so much a bad boy. I didn’t get a
lot of girls. That’s been an unfortunate theme with me, which has persisted for
many years beyond my rotten-little-kid days (sigh). What happens in childhood too often happens in--
Reporter: (lost in reverie
or an alcoholic haze) I bet he rides a chopper . . . Let's talk about your brother. He sounds interesting.
Hawkinson: Let's not.
Reporter: C’mon.
Hawkinson: No.
Reporter: You brought him up.
Hawkinson: No.
Reporter: Then let’s take a break. I’m getting
tired.
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