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with Julie Weathers, he was the complete naturalist, when he delivered
his product to his dealers, he was a cunning businessman. It may have
been just too crowded in that first pilot treehouse project.
Whatever the cause, Scott and Mickey had a disagreement and Mickey moved
out. Even though he and Scott parted company, Mickey's picture would
hang on one of the tree walls for the next ten years. Nobody ever
bothered to take it down. It was as familiar as the Winchester rifle
Scott always kept by the door. Mickey continued to be a reminder that
Scott had not as he liked to claim built the first treehouse all by
himself. "It would have been better for his big image, " Mickey said,
"to have built it by himself. I think whenever he would see me, it would
remind him that he didn't do it himself, and he really hated that."
Sometime after Mickey left, Scott decided that the treehouse needed
major upgrading. He and his helpers took ladders and broke into
lumberyards at night, taking the boards and beams they needed. "You're
kidding, " a friend laughed when Scott told him about the midnight
lumber thefts. "Doesn't that take a lot of energy to get those heavy
boards back to your place?
Wouldn't it have been easier just to buy the stuff? " Perhaps.
But, for Scott Scurlock, there was the excitement of stealing what he
needed. Any one could buy a 2-by-12-by-16-foot board, but few had the
guts to steal themnor the sheer physical strength required to run
through the woods in the dark with a board that size on their shoulders.
Scott and his henchman would go without a night's sleep to steal $200
worth of lumber. "He wanted to do anything that took balls to do, " his
friend said. "That was what he was about." Scott's treehouse was so
unique that word about it reached The Seattle Times.
The Times' Sunday paper had a section that featured unusual homes in the
area everything from millionaires' penthouses to refurbished 1920s
bungalows to houseboats and log cabins. The treehouse in Olympia was,
however, a first. Scott agreed to let photographers and a reporter visit
his home high among the branches, but he asked not to be identified.
That wasn't an unusual request, many of the featured homeowners
preferred to remain anonymous. They didn't want their homes to become
stops on somebody's Sunday drive. Scott, particularly, wanted to keep
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his world private. Even so, Scott couldn't resist posing for The Times'
photographer. A shot taken from high above showed him sitting in an
Afghan-draped easy chair.
The photograph was of a good-sized room with a table, range,
refrigerator, and wood stove. Two huge multipaned windows revealed the
tops of tall trees just outside. Scott was almost thirty at the time,
but he looked nineteen. He didn't bother to tell The Seattle Times that
he wasn't really the owner of the property on Overhulse because, in his
mind, the place was already his. Despite the favorable publicity his
treetop home had received, Scott's treehouse still needed a great deal
of refurbishing and remodeling. He recognized the fact that he wasn't a
skilled carpenter, even as he claimed to have been the sole builder of
his treehouse. Although Scott first offered a carpentry job to Steve
Meyers, it was Kevin who agreed to accept a temporary job during the
summer of 1984. But what Scott wanted from him had little to do with
building. The offer came in the middle of a conversation back in
Virginia earlier that spring.
Scott approached the subject in an oblique way, saying, "If I present
you with this situation, would you participate? " Kevin stared at him
confused. What situation? And then, before giving any more details,
Scott said, "I have to think about it.
I'll let you know." When Scott did tell Kevin what he had in mind, it
sounded innocent enough. He said he had rented some property south of
Olympia, near the Mima Mounds. (The Mima Mounds are literally thousands
of "blisters" of grass-covered earth that dot the landscape for miles.
No one knows where they came from or whether they were caused by some
accident of nature or by human beings. ) Scott told Kevin he needed
someone to watch the place for the summer. All Kevin would be required
to do was sit by the swimming pool and paint pictures. Kevin Meyers was
a bluntly honest man, and he made no effort to whitewash what Scott
eventually proposed to him. He wasn't naive enough to think Scott would
give him a free summer just so that he could paint, he knew Scott
planned to use him in some way. But that was OK, they would both get
something out of it. Kevin wondered why Scott had had to "think about
it." Was he to be a front for something illegal and had Scott actually
felt guilty about bringing him into what was going on? Or was it that
Scott had to decide if he trusted him or not? "The thing about Scott was
that, whenever he was involved with something that might rebound on him,
he didn't touch it himself. He was always the middle man' between the
middlemen between the middlemen, " Kevin mused. "But his friends loved
him enough that they didn't want to know what he was up to and they
really didn't care." Kevin had pressing problems himself that made it
easier for him not to look too closely at what Scott was up to, he
needed financial help that summer.
Despite his success, Kevin wasn't making enough with his art to do the
work on Springmale that he wanted to. s I just couldn't get ahead
because I couldn't afford the building materials. Whatever money came in [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]