The Way It Was – The treehouse

Editor’s note: The following column by Bill Boyd is being reprinted because the accompanying photo was inadvertently omitted when it was originally published on Friday.

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I was listening to a radio talk show the other day – I think it was a public broadcasting station. They were talking about the progress that has been made in gender equality in this country in the last 50 years.
I have personally witnessed those changes, and it has been great. For example, our granddaughter, Taylor, graduated from college not long ago with a degree in economics. And she competed with all the other economists, male and female, for any job she wanted. She was thrilled with the outcome, and that made me happy for her.
It was quite different 50 years ago, when gender inequality was a big problem, even right here in Marysville, and I’d like to tell you about it. I first noticed it sometime in the late ‘60s, a few years after we built our house on Sherwood Avenue. It was a new neighborhood with a few completed houses, and a few more under construction. And there were still a lot of undeveloped lots where kids could play. It was a great place to raise a family.
One of our neighbors was the Wade family, Brian and Sharon, plus their two boys, Clark and Barry. They lived diagonally across the street from us. Clark was about the same age as our son, Dave, so they played together a lot. Then one day, Clark came to our house, and he was really excited. His dad had told him he could build a treehouse in a large tree behind their house.

The next day, I saw both boys carrying damaged two-by-fours and odd shaped pieces of plywood from the scrap piles at the homes that were still under construction, to their building site. Dave raided my toolbox for a hammer, a saw, and a bag of nails, and then they were joined by some other boys.
For the next few days, I could hear hammering, and I saw those boys climbing all over that tree. Our daughter, Jenny, saw all the activity, and it looked like fun. So she went across the street to help.
The boys told Jenny she couldn’t help them. She wasn’t even allowed to go up the ladder and sit on a tree branch. They said they were building a clubhouse, and girls were not allowed in it. So they certainly weren’t allowed to help build it.
Jenny was crushed, but she hung around the tree, watching the boys hammer nails and things like that. The next day, the boys realized that they could use her to carry wood while they were in the tree hammering and sawing. Carrying wood from the piles to the tree wasn’t much fun anyway. So they decided they would let her carry some of the scrap lumber.
A few days later, the treehouse was completed. It was a two-level structure. The lower level was kind of a porch. The main clubhouse was upstairs. That’s where their meetings would be held. The boys were all over that treehouse that day, and Jenny wanted to see the finished product. She had helped carry some of the lumber, so surely they would allow her to see it.
But rules were rules, and no girls were allowed in the treehouse. Then I think the boys may have felt a little guilty, because Jenny had carried some of the wood for them. So they decided to allow her to go up the ladder and sit on the “porch.” She couldn’t go into the upper floor, however. That was “off limits” to all girls.
Jenny was dejected, but she went up the ladder and sat on the porch. And that’s when I took the photo shown here.
You can see the disappointment in her face. It was gender inequality, no question about it, and it happened right here in Marysville just about 50 years ago. So you see, we really have made a lot of progress since then. In fact, today she could build her own treehouse if she wanted to. She might even be able to get a couple of those boys to help her.