No tennis today but a picture day!

For my siblings who may read this today it is about the farm and pictures.  We all remember Mom and Dad inviting Olaf and June or Obert and Bertie or other neighbors to watch those darn slides that Dad would take in Washington DC or New York City.  Well today just a few pictures but the story behind them is so so different.  I might add that I am pretty sure I have posted some of not all these pictures in the past but with a different twist!

I think the yard light was put in about 1953 or so.  To have a yard light was wonderful.  REA was a godsend for rural America.

Every time I see this picture I get a knot in my stomach.  A hole in OUR barn so the car would be inside!  What the heck!  Dad you needed to build a garage and leave the barn as a barn, really!

One can see the mail box near the driveway.  Dad did that after Bert had to sell his farm and the mail man then came from the south instead of around the lake from the north.  The weedy part of the yard to the right was where I often had to retrieve my golf balls by rolling a barrel over the weeds.  With each bump I would pick up a ball!  I know, my golf game was nothing to brag about BUT I had the only one hole golf course in the country!!!

Sometime after I left home the door was put on the south side.  Before that the door was on the east and there was a window where you see the siding on the right side of the picture.  When we milked cows the separator sat in the entry way about where the door is now!

The top four pictures are what was part of our farm when I and my siblings grew up in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s.  Of course there was also the chicken house, the shed, the garage that blew down, steel bins, the corn crib and more.  In the early 80s the fire that swept the dry creek bed destroyed every thing on the farm and left charred wood and scorched machinery in its wake.  The bottom picture is what you see today if you drive past where the farm was.  Between the bean field and the deer stand that you see is the creek bed that actually was the demise of the farm.  

I was reminded of this today as I sat at the computer and looked at the web site "North Dakota images which is full of old farms in ND and SD.  It made me wonder if it was better for the farm to be destroyed by fire or just rot away!  Of course there was no choice but as I age I think about it often.  In this last picture you would have seen a long shelter belt of trees from the left of the deer stand to the right of the picture if you would have been looking 40 years ago.  There were maybe 6 +/- rows.  I am guessing George Lee who bought that land or his son Robert took out the trees for crop land and just left a small groove where the deer stand is.  I have no idea when the trees came down or when things were cleaned up so that the farm yard could become a field.  Just beyond the deer stand used to be Bert's farm but he was forced to sell to the Wild Life so I am guessing it may be a great place now for a deer stand as the deer come off of the protected Wild Life Preserve.  George and his wife are still living and reside in a home for the elderly in Fargo while son Robert lives on the farm and does the farming now.  I am guessing Robert is maybe mid 50s but I do not know.  Terry and I stopped in to talk to him a couple of years ago.
I certainly have mixed feelings as I view the pictures.  If I look at myself and my 5 siblings I THINK nobody had aspirations of farming and "why" I am not sure.  I would guess that growing up on a farm that was outdated by many many years certainly had something to do with it.  Most of the farm land was sold to George after the fire.  The last parcel of land was sold after Dad died in 1997.  As years go by things change and one only needs to look back to see what was, what could have been or what is today.

It looks like a very nice day.  I am tempted to drive to the grocery store today just to see what is happening.  Terry and I need nothing.  Oh wait a minute.  Terry does have a Dr. appt at 1:30 today so I will take her and then kill time by stopping in a couple of stores.  No worry, I will be careful and take due diligence to wash hands when I get home.

No breakfast today as I just was not hungry but of course I did have that wonderful FP coffee and it did get me off on the right path for the day.  Enough!