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Cardboard kingdoms: the art of building box forts

Cardboard kingdoms: the art of building box forts

Adults and children worked on a big box fort at the Center on Main Saturday, Aug. 23. The program was a collaboration between the Center and the Falls Village Recreation Commission.

Patrick L. Sullivan

FALLS VILLAGE — Children manned the ramparts of a large box fort at the Center on Main Saturday, Aug. 23.

The activity was sponsored by the Center and the Recreation Commission. When a reporter wandered in Saturday morning, the Center’s Britta Sallick and Recreation’s Emily Petersen, with assistance from Greer Sallick and Ted Moys, were just getting started.

For materials they had cutting devices and a sort of screwdriver especially made for attaching pieces of cardboard together. The grownups handled this part of the operation.

And there was lots of cardboard. Some of the bigger and sturdier pieces were obtained from sources such as day care centers, but most came from the town’s transfer station. Many had Amazon labels.

As the morning progressed, more children and parents filtered in. The youngsters wavered between the desire to help out and the urge to get inside the fort. It came out about even.

When the reporter left the fort was definitely taking shape, and children were merrily crawling around inside, occasionally peeking out the windows.

Patrick L. Sullivan
Senior Reporter
Patrick Sullivan has been a reporter for The Lakeville Journal since 2004, covering everything from town meetings to local characters and the outdoors. He grew up in Northern Virginia but spent summers on Mount Riga in Salisbury, giving him a lifelong connection to the Northwest Corner. A graduate of Denison University, Patrick is also the author of Tangled Lines, the newspapers’ popular fly-fishing column—making The Lakeville Journal, as far as anyone knows, the only newspaper in Connecticut with a regular fly-fishing columnist. He once received a fan letter from England, which he considers sufficient evidence that his work has achieved international acclaim.

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