Box fort drives Internet bonkers
The Trentelman family resolved their box-fort dispute with the city, but a Facebook post about the incident went viral.
Jeremy Trentelman recalls the very moment he lost control of his own story, not to mention his privacy and a good measure of his sanity: when he posted the evidence of his misadventure with city officials on social media.
A few weeks ago, the well-meaning father of two toddlers constructed a child’s fort in his front yard, using oversize boxes he’d hauled home from his job at a downtown flower shop.
A day later came a notice from the city: Remove the fort within 15 days. Or pay a $125 fine.
“It sounded big and scary and imposing,” he said. “I was irritated for about an hour. And then I laughed.” He decided to leave the fort up until the last day.
But not before posting a copy of the letter on Facebook, hoping for a few “likes” among friends. “ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDIN ME!!!?!” he wrote. “We build a completely awesome box castle in our front yard for our kids to play in and we get a notice from code enforcement?!? ‘Waste material or junk,’ it says . . . what about totally awesome fun zone . . . what a joke!!!”
Within 24 hours, it had been shared more than1,000 times. And that was only the beginning.
Trentelman’s post began trending, then went viral. The Internet took his story and ran with it.
Social media are always in search of the latest “new” thing. But if you’re so unlucky to fall within their sights, Trentelman said, crazy, unpredictable things happen: Gross inaccuracies. A stolen message. Political pontificating.
The story appeared as far away as Britain and China. A Facebook page, “Support Jeremy Trentelman! Cardboard Fort Campaign in Ogden,” was created, with people urged to build their own box forts in solidarity with the dad. The problem: Little of what was being said was true. Trentelman fought back, writing a letter to the local paper. There was no front-yard war in Utah, he said. City officials even stopped by his house to voice their support. And he took offence at the Internet comments that portrayed Ogden and its officials as yahoos. “Please be nice to my city and its inhabitants,” he wrote.
But there was one more media platform they hoped would set the record straight. Fox News had called from New York City. They wanted the Trentelmans, with 2-year-old Story and 3- 1⁄2- year-old Max, to build a box fort outside its studios in Manhattan.
Trentelman’s father, Charlie, for years a columnist for the Standard-Examiner, accompanied the family to New York.
On a flight from New York, Charlie Trentelman occupied a seat next to New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and asked him whether he’d heard about the Utah box fort. He hadn’t. But the man on the other side of Trentelman had.
“So, there’s still hope,” the elder Trentelman said, that the publisher of the New York Times “has other things to worry about than a box fort in Utah.”
In the end, Jeremy Trentelman never took down his creation. While the family was in New York, a hard rain turned the castle to mulch.
Friends hauled it away.