When I was a kid me and my brothers decided we were going to build a fort in the backyard.  Our older brother had already built a nice sized tree fort in-between 4 tall pine trees in the same yard.  We were young so ours was smaller and built on the ground and not in a tree.  It was constructed of all scrap material and was in the A-Shape design.  It was definitely a shack, a fort, one of a kind built of all junk and turned into a treasured hideout for us.  Well, one day we decided to gather some tree sap from the pine trees to make a homemade candle.  If you know anything about tree sap you would know it is flammable and burns for a long time, this is something we had learned from a book or something.  So we made some homemade candle’s using tree sap and the bottom half of a pop can.  It was basically my younger brothers fort and he wasn’t very old at the time so he decided to take the candle inside the fort which had a wall for a roof also.  Somehow the candle got to close to the wall and kazaam up in flames.  The fire started kind of slow so we noticed it and ran to get some water we ran bucket for bucket for about 3 min and were doing pretty well fighting it but the smoke cloud was huge and we were probably ganna get in trouble for this one.  We needed more water power, smoke barreling at this point, I grab the super soacker which held not that much water but it could take aim at the fire better than the buckets, at this point there is flames shooting out the doors of the small A-Frame.  My brothers still carrying buckets of water as fast as they can and me shooting inside the buildings doors withe the super soaker some how we got lucky and the fire started dying back. ” Keep it coming it ’s going out.”    We decided to grab a hose while still fighting it and really doused it good.   The super soaker and later the hose really saved the day and what was left of the backyard fort.  But after looking at the smoke damage inside and the black walls, it was a great fire fight and I would have to say the fort was gone.  We eventually fixed it and decided not to bring anymore candles in that fort it was just to small for fire.  So that’s why kids should not play with matches…

                                                  ( Pine Tree Sap )

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