Monday, June 28, 2010

Life on Liberty Ridge

No particular story here. Just a scene that caught my eye the other day. As usual, I was taking the long way around to get to the grocery store when this little barn popped into view. For a change I didn't have my trusty photo taking machine with me. I did my grocery shopping and took the short route home where I grabbed the old Canon and headed back to this spot on Liberty Ridge Road. I don't know anything about the place other than it makes a nice photo subject. After I arrived back home, I was downloading the shots into my computing thing when I realized that there was a second building in the picture, a dilapidated farm house. Now maybe there is a story here. Let's journey back, say a hundred years, to the time when a young couple found this tract of land in the middle of nowhere (just south of somewhere). They had been living with his parents and she was expecting their first child. They owned a couple of cows, a bull and a few chickens and had saved up enough money to make a down payment on a place of their own. With a loan from a bank in nearby Platteville (this was before the "M" appeared on the Platteville Mound), the land was purchased and, with the help of friends and family members, a house and a barn were constructed. what a joyous time that must have been. I'll bet that on a quiet summer evening you can probably still hear the laughter of those farm kids as they frolic through the fields capturing fire flies and playing "Red Rover". The family grew as did the number of cows and chickens. More land was purchased and the small plot of a couple of acres became a respectable spread of several hundred acres. The kids grew up and moved to places of their own, ma and pa along with their old barn and house had completed their mission. I'm sure that in one of the small weed covered cemeteries that dot the surrounding area, a pair of weathered tombstones mark the final resting place of that jubilant young couple while the skeletal remains of the house and barn mark the spot where a hard working, hard loving family found their "Liberty on the Ridge".

If you look real close on the right side of the barn,
the remains of the old farm house is visible.


I'm off now to prepare for my "Knee High by the Fourth of July" survey!