I always remember childhood adventures watching Stand By Me. Doesn’t everyone?
When I was fourteen, somebody’s brother found a World War II bunker
Somebody’s brother said there was an abandoned airstrip and a World War II bunker in a farmer’s field. It was about an hour’s walk from our houses and the twins wanted to see it because the twins wanted to join the army when they turned sixteen.
We went on a Saturday. It was a concrete block pushed halfway into the earth. There was creepy graffiti on the walls — strangers’ warnings to GET OUT and MIND THE RATS. You’d spend forty careful minutes inching into the dark only to dash out in four panicked seconds, twisting an ankle on rubble and catching your calves on steel construction wire. Somebody’s brother and his buddies knew the layout by touch, so I guess there was some shame in bringing a torch.
This is also where, on subsequent visits, we shot the majority of our second short film — a war movie. One weekend, we took the bus to Toys ‘R’ Us and bought green army helmets made for child soldiers. Between us, we already had plenty of plastic guns. The twins cut rank insignias out of white electrical tape and the rest of us didn’t mind being privates to their Majors because the rest of us didn’t realise.
Our film wasn’t very good and, shortly after that, we outgrew the bunker. I moved to a neighbouring village and found that a half hour’s walk back was somehow harder than an hour’s walk to certain adventure. Not a very good excuse, thinking about it now — I’d walk years to get back.
