Photo by Bill Stokes
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper continuing to wallow in the “going home” experience of revisiting his boyhood haunts in Wisconsin’s Barron County, of standing in the exact spots where he experienced the wonderful ups and downs of pre-fledging days—getting bucked off his pony, cranking at a Model T all one winter, setting the hayfork with an impatient father sweating up in the haymow, a long suffering mother bringing frozen clothes in from the outside clothesline.
The barn and the haymow are long gone but the clothesline still stands over where the garden was once located.
There is no trace of either the country school or the corner country church that were big in the keeper’s youth. And to stand in the places where they were once located is to hear the ticking of the big clock and maybe to wonder what the alarm setting is for you?
“Going home again” may generate such a thought process—not a sad one but one of remembering what a glorious thing it was to have lived through it all from these very special beginnings.
Thanks again to Phyllis, Mike and Sarah!
