Legend of Kenny and the treehouse still inspires

My friend Kenny was decades ahead of his time. The year we graduated from high school, he moved into a tiny home. Actually, it was a treehouse. He lived there for a year.

Really. It was epic.

The story of Kenny and the treehouse is actually much bigger than that. Kenny lived life large – sometimes unwisely – in those years. But memorably. He resided in more than a dozen homes and drove more than a dozen cars in the first few years out of high school. He and his girlfriend ran off to San Diego, then came back. He left a job at the post office to sell Kirby vacuum cleaners. I lived with Kenny longer than anyone outside my family and remain close friends with him after decades.

And there's always this: He lived in a treehouse in our hometown of Eureka.

It's a story that I told to amuse and amaze my sons as they grew up, since living in a treehouse is a common childhood fantasy.

Kenny's domicile was in the backyard of his parent's house, a few blocks from where my parents lived. The home's previous owners, who ran a construction company, built the home between three redwood trees and ran electricity to it.

After Kenny finished high school, he reached an agreement (probably with few options) to move into the treehouse and pay his parents $100 a month rent ($300 in today's dollars). He became a legend among his friends.

"You're living in the treehouse?" we would ask. "Awesome!" (Because we called everything "awesome." And because it was.)

When Kenny took residence, he did some construction – installing items important to an 18-year-old. He added a small refrigerator and a gas stove top, for which he planned to pipe gas (but never did). He bought a microwave. He also did the seemingly miraculous – running water (into a treehouse!) for a toilet that worked and a shower he never finished.

As he said in an email recently, "I had a refrigerator, microwave and toilet – which was great for beer, popcorn and the aftermath thereof."

Kenny lived in a treehouse with a fridge, toilet, electricity and bed.

For a year. When we were 18.

When I asked Kenny about it recently, he remembered physical details about the treehouse, as well as the experience of hearing sirens and shots fired from his elevated, thinly insulated home. He recalled windy nights when the trees would slam into the side of his home, making him wonder if it would plummet.

He remembers that, but here's what I remember: How cool it was that he lived in a treehouse, where his girlfriend would visit and they would hang out in his top-floor bedroom and listen to Eagles albums. How he had his own refrigerator and a toilet that was 10 feet in the air.

He moved out only when two other friends joined the two of us in a flat above a local supermarket, a building we thrashed in the six months we lived there before Kenny and I relocated to a duplex across town.

Here's my only takeaway: Before the era of tiny houses and off-the-grid houses and all other variations, my friend Kenny lived for a year in a treehouse.

It still is mind-blowing.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.