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By: Jim Fitzpatrick |
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Email: jim@nunica.com |
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Local Farmer in Polkton Township writes for the Coopersville Observer. |
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Along Brandy Creek By Jim Fitzpatrick
The Coopersville Observer January 30, 2006- - No. 66 |
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The county road cuts through a piece of high ground west of the barn. The final remains of a hundred year old maple crumble at the edge of the ditch bank. Old plat maps show that a house and barns once stood there in the open field, not far from where the maple grew. The farmer’s father once told of playing in the abandoned house and out buildings as a young boy. He recalled a crucifix still hanging on the wall in one of the dark, eerie, lifeless rooms. The place had not been lived in for years and years back then.
No one passing these days would have reason to believe that lives were spent there on the sandy knoll. It is all part of the farmer’s field, has been for several generations now. His family’s newer house is set back from the tilled land, off in the woods. However, when the plow goes through in the spring, followed by a good rain; bits and pieces of the past show themselves where the old house stood. The farmer’s kids poke around in the dirt, find new “treasures” each time they go out to search. Chunks of coal, pieces of window glass, shards of china, fragments of brown clay jugs, broken bricks, charred wood, square nails; shattered medicine bottles and the lid of a sugar bowel have been found. Grandpa once discovered a miniature tea cup, no bigger than the end of your thumb!
The stump of the old maple is nearly gone. A half a dozen young spruce trees crowd in on the space once shaded by the big tree. Did some of the folks from days gone by plant it as a young sapling in their front yard? |
