|
By: Jim Fitzpatrick |
|
Email: jim@nunica.com |
|
Local Farmer in Polkton Township writes for the Coopersville Observer. |
|
Along Brandy Creek By Jim Fitzpatrick
The Coopersville Observer July 4, 2011- - No. 113 |
|
At the back of Dan and Sue’s farm a y-shaped gully cuts through the wooded landscape. Two small streams at the bottom join into one as the water makes its way south to nearby Grand River at Eastmanville. The banks are steep and deep, covered with patches of Poison Ivy, laced with animal trails, and moist from recent rains under a green canopy of Basswood and Oak and Maple.
The grassy lane along their south tree-lined fence-line leads west past two small gardens and on to the foot path that descends into the wooded gullies. Along this path history has been preserved literally “in stone”, going back almost one hundred years. Not the usual names, initials and dates carved in the smooth bark of a Beech tree; but, chiseled into the surface of an exceptionally large, flat, moss-covered, sandstone rock. The oldest recorded date is by A.R.B, July 9, 1912. And there is M.D.V. and E.N. I.K.E. left his undated initials too. H. Davey came by on Sept. 27, 1917. He appears to have returned with his hammer and chisel on Aug. 21, 1922. Sue’s grandmother once made reference to the “Davey Boys” and some of their not so complimentary antics as young fellows.
Dan and Sue moved to their picturesque small farm along 68thAve. when they were married in 1976. On being asked how the two of them first encountered one another, Dan told the story and then added that he knew right off that Sue was the women he was going to marry. And that is the way it happened, like the rock along the footpath, they are still together there on the farm and likely will be for a long long time. |
