The Story of Josh Part Thirty Six … Tales from the Cleft
The therapist tells me that he wants t go for a walk around town as we talk. He says that they have been shooting all day and he needs a break and a slice of pizza. I am good with that the weather is clear and the humidity is low. We saunter down the street with little local shops and real brick sidewalks enjoying the weather and the happy people.
“When you were at your saddest where was your happy place?” He asks me.
I am taken back. Most of the other therapists have just let me ramble till I find my thread but he is asking a direct question. I like this change up and am surprised by how easy it is for me to answer the question.
I begin …
The subdivision where my grandparents live in Ohio is built on the very Moraine that the city is named after. It was built in the mid 1970’s on the edge of the heavily eroded miles long mound. Back in the day (Like around the time of the flood in 1913) the locals used it as an unofficial dump and so you can dig several feet anywhere on the hill and find debris. There are also two dumps on the moraine one of them active and nasty and the other closed and green … like giant puss filled boil covered in layers of makeup.
In the late 1970’s a second subdivision, the very one that would later buy a home in and then financially melt down in, was built near the one that my grandparents live in. Between them is a creek that has cut a massive cleft between the two. At the foot the creek empties into a channel that takes it to the Little Miami River and at the head is a park. Between them is a jungle a jungle of dense secondary growth forest that descends from the top of the hill to the bottom.
The cleft is studded with the ruins of the past that generations after generation of kids have left there since before the subdivisions were built. It was the place that we played as kids. We would stage mock wars, make camp fires, and build forts. I hated living in Ohio when I was a kid and the cleft of woods between the subdivisions was my safe place, the place where I could go and be safe
My last summer living in Ohio as a kid we built the hill fort. On one side of the cleft the wall got very steep. Me, my unnamed brother, my uncle, and my then best friend Jeff spent days digging a fort into the side of the hill. We strung a hidden rope up the side to make the climb up the very steep hill easier and four fifths of the way up we found a natural shelf to act as the base for the fort. That thing was awesome … wish I still had it.
There as a very flat and clear area where the creek got its deepest (maybe three feet deep). There were no trees there and the remains of a very large and apparently complex fort built by teenagers in the early eighties were strewn amongst the tall grasses of the flat area. It was in this area where the bottom of the climbing rope was hidden and it was also where we had out fire pit. The pit started out as a bare patch of earth and following a fire that nearly got out of had it grew into something a fire marshal might have built. It was deep, wide, and surrounded by a foot high wall of creek rocks. One time we decided that we wanted to make pool to swim in. The water was probably as nasty as all get out but we didn’t know that. We spent a weekend building a dam of old boards, rocks, and mud.
Mind you I had never read IT by Stephen King at this point.
The pool was pretty awesome when it was finished. But after the first heavy rain the dam was washed away. But hey, I never said that I was a fucking engineer.
The Cleft was also where I had my first “Bug Out” kit. I was always thinking about running away while I lived with my grandparents and my mother. Not because I wanted to be on my own but because after years of moving around I figured I should always be prepared to get the fuck out as quickly as possible. The kit was a plastic tub hidden in the foliage under rocks. Inside I had a clean change of clothes, a jacket, a toothbrush, a mess kit, a canteen, a back pack, a poncho, several cans of food, a knife, rope, and about fifty dollars in change that I had “collected”. When I moved away I never had the opportunity to retrieve the kit.
I wonder what happened to it.
My therapist commends me for having a kit for getting away and is even more impressed when I tell him that I have supplies put away for me and my family to survive an emergency. He says that he has to get back to work but stresses that he still want to hear more of my work experiences. Then he asks me to consider the worst nightmare I ever had so we can talk about it next time.
That’s all for today.
“When you were at your saddest where was your happy place?” He asks me.
I am taken back. Most of the other therapists have just let me ramble till I find my thread but he is asking a direct question. I like this change up and am surprised by how easy it is for me to answer the question.
I begin …
The subdivision where my grandparents live in Ohio is built on the very Moraine that the city is named after. It was built in the mid 1970’s on the edge of the heavily eroded miles long mound. Back in the day (Like around the time of the flood in 1913) the locals used it as an unofficial dump and so you can dig several feet anywhere on the hill and find debris. There are also two dumps on the moraine one of them active and nasty and the other closed and green … like giant puss filled boil covered in layers of makeup.
In the late 1970’s a second subdivision, the very one that would later buy a home in and then financially melt down in, was built near the one that my grandparents live in. Between them is a creek that has cut a massive cleft between the two. At the foot the creek empties into a channel that takes it to the Little Miami River and at the head is a park. Between them is a jungle a jungle of dense secondary growth forest that descends from the top of the hill to the bottom.
The cleft is studded with the ruins of the past that generations after generation of kids have left there since before the subdivisions were built. It was the place that we played as kids. We would stage mock wars, make camp fires, and build forts. I hated living in Ohio when I was a kid and the cleft of woods between the subdivisions was my safe place, the place where I could go and be safe
My last summer living in Ohio as a kid we built the hill fort. On one side of the cleft the wall got very steep. Me, my unnamed brother, my uncle, and my then best friend Jeff spent days digging a fort into the side of the hill. We strung a hidden rope up the side to make the climb up the very steep hill easier and four fifths of the way up we found a natural shelf to act as the base for the fort. That thing was awesome … wish I still had it.
There as a very flat and clear area where the creek got its deepest (maybe three feet deep). There were no trees there and the remains of a very large and apparently complex fort built by teenagers in the early eighties were strewn amongst the tall grasses of the flat area. It was in this area where the bottom of the climbing rope was hidden and it was also where we had out fire pit. The pit started out as a bare patch of earth and following a fire that nearly got out of had it grew into something a fire marshal might have built. It was deep, wide, and surrounded by a foot high wall of creek rocks. One time we decided that we wanted to make pool to swim in. The water was probably as nasty as all get out but we didn’t know that. We spent a weekend building a dam of old boards, rocks, and mud.
Mind you I had never read IT by Stephen King at this point.
The pool was pretty awesome when it was finished. But after the first heavy rain the dam was washed away. But hey, I never said that I was a fucking engineer.
The Cleft was also where I had my first “Bug Out” kit. I was always thinking about running away while I lived with my grandparents and my mother. Not because I wanted to be on my own but because after years of moving around I figured I should always be prepared to get the fuck out as quickly as possible. The kit was a plastic tub hidden in the foliage under rocks. Inside I had a clean change of clothes, a jacket, a toothbrush, a mess kit, a canteen, a back pack, a poncho, several cans of food, a knife, rope, and about fifty dollars in change that I had “collected”. When I moved away I never had the opportunity to retrieve the kit.
I wonder what happened to it.
My therapist commends me for having a kit for getting away and is even more impressed when I tell him that I have supplies put away for me and my family to survive an emergency. He says that he has to get back to work but stresses that he still want to hear more of my work experiences. Then he asks me to consider the worst nightmare I ever had so we can talk about it next time.
That’s all for today.
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