Memoir Writing Prompt: What’s Your Favorite Place of All Times?

Our playhouse in the apple orchard on my childhood farm is my most favorite place of all. (You can just barely see it behind the family picnic.) I must have been five years old when our Uncle Bill helped Daddy build the house and tow it up the knoll to rest under a large apple tree.

The three of us kids could hardly stand the excitement. But even after they situated the little house under the biggest apple tree, Uncle Bill would not release the “deed” to us.

“Move out of my way,” he said. “You can’t see it until I’m done.” With colorful corrugated cardboard backgrounds he had absconded from his window-decorating job at Macy’s on 5th Avenue, Uncle Bill entered our playhouse and began his work.

After a couple long hours of waiting, he said it was now ours. And what a beauty it was. A wall of corrugated cardboard displayed a red brick fireplace with a roaring fire. The wall adjacent to the fireplace held ceiling to floor bookcase with books such as Peter Pan and Wizard of Oz. They looked so real I thought I could reach out and grab one, sit in the corrugated chair in front of the bookcase, and start reading. The other two walls had wainscoting and beautiful wallpaper.

My sister, brother, and I slept in our playhouse almost all that summer. We had enough room to spread out Mom’s quilts for a soft bed and still have space for a little cupboard with snacks. When my sister and I weren’t playing house there, the three of us played Monopoly, Chinese Checkers, and Go Fish. But the most fun time for me happened when I took my Nancy Drew, Spin and Marty, and Bobbsey Twin books and read all day long—for many days at a time. Propped up on pillows, I sank into layers of old quilts. The one window in the house let in enough light to read. At night, we used flashlights which added a scary feel to the mysteries.

Rainy, windy nights offered even more atmosphere to scary stories we told each other in the dark. With twigs brushing the metal roof and the pounding of occasional apples falling, we all jumped at the sounds. My brother, Rodney, was the best scary story teller. He tried his hardest to scare me into running from the playhouse, out of the orchard, and into the arms of Mom who lay sound asleep in the main house. However, his swamp monster or snake ogre only made me snuggle closer to my big sister. One time, he jumped up in the middle of his own story, quickly flung open the door, and ran like crazy to the house. Virginia and I looked at each other a moment, and she completed his story where the monster became a sweet little ogre.

Memoir Writing Prompt: What’s your favorite place of all times? Why? Who helped to make that place special for you? Write about it.

Have fun with the memories as you write your story for your generations to come.