Johanna Vossler/Times-Delta Don James and his dog Toby are the only ones that enjoy the treehouse he built in his Visalia backyard. He used lumber from an old barn for the structure. Johanna Vossler/Times-Delta Jason Johnson, 14, has to lock his treehouse because it has a small television and a CD player. It also has running water, a table, and places to sleep during the summer. Johanna Vossler/Times-Delta Christian Brown, 6, right, and his sister, Katie, 10, hang out the window of their Visalia treehouse. Their 12-year-old brother, Austin, designed the structure.   Building a treehouse Want to build your own treehouse? A construction permit may not be required as long as there's no wiring, plumbing or mechanical work and the structure is not excessively large. There are restrictions, however. For example, the structure can be no higher than 12 feet and no closer than 3 feet to the property line. Robert Buss, plans examiner for the Visalia Building Department, makes the following suggestions: 1. If you're within city limits, call the local planning department to make sure you're properly zoned. If you live in a subdivision, call your homeowners association to see if treehouses are prohibited. 2. Think small. Treehouses larger than 5 feet by 5 feet may not be sufficiently stable. 3. Think safety. The elements can do a lot of damage to a tree- house in relatively little time. "I know when I was a kid, we had a treehouse and were always impaling ourselves," Buss said. "Nails were always coming loose." 4. Call the following for more information: Buss, 713-4330; Tulare County Resource Management Agency, 733-6291; Tulare Planning & Building, 684-4218.

Climb the 14 narrow steps leading to Don James' backyard treehouse -- yes, it's sturdy; no, the dogs don't bite -- and tell the good folks what you see.

An 8-by-5 structure made of ordinary wood?

Wrong. Those planks came from an Ivanhoe barn built in the 1930s, when craftsmanship meant something.

Fourteen lengths of PVC pipe laid side by side and covered with dirt and leaves?

Wrong again. That's a 20-foot slide, so slick, steep and dangerous that it was used just once.

An iguana pen?

Technically, yes. But long before James took in a reptile boarder this summer, the 10-foot-high treehouse was the telephone- and cable-TV-equipped domain of his grandsons, Paulo and Carlo.

In short, when Don James sees his Royal Oaks Avenue tree- house, he sees -- the past.

"I had one when I was growing up," said the 69-year-old, who grew up in El Paso, Texas. "But it was nothing like this."

Nostalgia is big among Central Valley treehouse owners. When they watch children or grandchildren playing in the branches of a Valley oak or locust tree, it brings back memories of childhoods spent as far from the ground -- and parents -- as possible.

Some things never change.

"Sometimes they like to get away from grandma and grandpa," Tulare's Margaret Castellanoz said of her 10 grandchildren, who never miss an opportunity to climb into her 15-year-old treehouse. "Sometimes it's a boys' club, sometimes it's a little girls' playhouse. Sometimes they cooperate -- but there's arguments."

Yeah, some things never change.

Unlike James' 21st century contraption, the Castellanoz tree house is decidedly low-tech. A ladder, not a staircase, leads to the platform. There's a table inside, not a telephone, and a flat roof, not a peaked one. Chicken wire covers the windows.

In other words, it's perfect.

"We're remodeling the house," said Castellanoz, who's lived in her Bardsley Avenue home for 40 years. "But nobody's touching that treehouse."

Getting an eyeful

Nostalgia's not everything, though. A treehouse -- unlike, say, a rotary phone or baking from scratch -- still makes sense.

One of the tree house's traditional advantages is the view. Where better for height-challenged children to oversee imaginary troop movements, guard against enemy attack or just look for trouble?

Sometimes, they don't have to look very far. From her treehouse overlooking Whitendale Park in Visalia, 10-year-old Katie Brown has seen more than her share of, well, unwholesome behavior.

So she shared an example.

"Not that!" said her mother, Kathy Brown, whose sons, 12-year-old Austin and 6-year-old Christian, also use the South Jacob Street treehouse.

So what else is visible from the children's lofty perch, a structure supported by three trees -- a palm, a pine and a eucalyptus -- and accessible through a trapdoor in the floor?

"We see people walking dogs," said Katie, suddenly appreciative of the fact that nobody likes a tattletale. "They never clean up after them."

OK, maybe not so appreciative.

The action's inside

Some treehouse dwellers don't have time to worry about what's going on outside the walls, however. That certainly describes Jason Johnson, who, on a typical summer afternoon, invites a few buddies to watch TV, fire up the PlayStation and listen to music in his Howard Street treehouse.

What did you expect, a rope ladder and a "No Gurls Allowd" sign?

"We started one in my friends' tree, but it wasn't that good," said Johnson, a 14-year-old freshman at Mt. Whitney High School. "Then we got bored and started building it in our tree. We just kept on adding to it."

It took an entire summer, but the result was worth it.

For a while.

"Then we got bored with it," he said. "But when it comes summertime we'll probably go back up there."

No grown-ups allowed?

Don't get the idea that treehouses have a built-in age limit, though. You may be graying at the temples. You may grunt when you get out of a chair. You may think Huey Lewis is still getting MTV airtime. You may be thinking, "Huey Lewis? MTV?"

But that doesn't mean you've outgrown treehouses.

"I have plans," said 59-year-old Jackie Altermatt, whose husband began building an Orchard Avenue tree house a year and a half ago. "I do a little painting sometimes, and I plan to use it in the summer and spring as a painting room."

The Altermatt treehouse -- which technically sits around a tree rather than in one -- has a deck, windows and four supporting posts. When finished, it will have a roof.

And a problem.

"My grandchildren think it's theirs," Altermatt said. "But they were a good excuse to have it built. I've wanted one since I was a child."

It's just a matter of time, though, until the young ones move on to other things. That's what's happening at Jason Johnson's house. And it's what happened at Don James' barn in the sky, the one he built for his grandsons 10 years ago.

Those boys are 17 and 15 now, and the treehouse's only regular occupant is Toby, a border collie who rockets to the top of the stairs whenever he hears a noise outside the fence.

In the end, however, James did what he set out to do. That treehouse allowed him to recapture his childhood -- even if he couldn't preserve his grandsons.'

"Now you've got a very narrow window of time to keep kids interested -- even with the TV and the phone," James said. "But I would do it again. It was worth it for the time we did have."

Originally published Saturday, December 14, 2002