Galvin crop

When I was a mere yute, I helped build The Fort.

Technically, this was true. What I actually did was was hammer a few nails to steady the back wall, and sneak through Augusta’s field at dusk to squirrel away some stray boards from the construction pile behind Paul’s Pizza & Seafood.

Not exactly a “What I Did in the War” story, but enough to qualify me for entry privileges.

Forts in those days had strict rules about such things, so I risked my thumbs to take part in the construction — despite parental warnings against using hammers, sharp objects or, for that matter, wood.

But this was important, because this was no ordinary fort.

The Fort was built upon a foundation of stilts that reached to the bottom of the gully that marked the end of our neighbors’ property. It must have risen 25 … 50 … 100 feet in the air — or so it seemed to Yodel-scoffing preteen boys in the days between Beatlemania and the moon landing.

A suspension walkway — actually, a rickety assemblage of two-by-fours and fraying clothesline rope — led from the edge of the gully to the front door, which was built Dutch style so as to scout the approach of potential intruders.

And, by that, we meant police, building inspectors, or (worse) girls who no doubt would contaminate our sanctuary with cooties.

Well, the girls would. The police and the inspectors would only force us to dismantle what had taken most of the early summer to create. This was in no way, shape or form a legal ADU.

The wind would whistle through the pitch pine, oaks and birches that grew in the gully, then slip between the wall boards of The Fort. We’d (well, They’d) tarped the roof, so rain wasn’t an issue unless it came down sideways — which, in fact it always did.

Through it all, the stilts held their ground. The fort never collapsed, never caught fire, and was never infected with cooties. The bridge lost a tread or two, easily replaced with a mission to the wood pile.

There were no deaths and no injuries. The worst thing that happened was that the older boys — the ones who had tarped the roof — got even older, changed the entry requirements, and started allowing girls inside.

I hadn’t thought of The Fort for years, decades actually, until I stumbled upon a story in The Hollywood Reporter about the recent surge of billionaires building massive survivalist bunkers to ward off far worse things than the germs carried by preteen girls.

An underground complex in Oklahoma has been priced at $7.5 million. Another required building a 30-foot-deep lake surrounding the property — a moat topped with a substance that on a moment’s notice can turn into a literal ring of fire, with water cannons strong enough to knock parachuting invaders and even helicopters from landing.

Talk about taking Get Off My Lawn to the Nth degree.

Secret passages, tunnel systems, impenetrable walls abound. One has a British-style phone booth that turns opaque and opens a door to a two-story escape slide when you dial — and I’m not kidding — 867-5309.

I could go on, but you get the idea … although I do hope that, in case of the zombie apocalypse, the billionaire who has a complete underground hospital at their disposal doesn’t have entry requirements that prevent medical personnel from joining them down there.

It goes without saying, although I’ll remind us anyway, that the rich are different. They get the bells, the whistles, all the best toys — apparently served with a heaping helping of self-preservation and a pinch or two of paranoia.

Me? I dunno. Gimme a Yodel and a summer rain blowing sideways. If the zombies come, they come.