Just as all people are created equal, and from the scientist to the hobo in the roadside vacant lot, each have some special talent,sense or ability they are gifted with, so, also, we find that every spot o nearth has something different and appealing to people who have grown up and made their home there. From the rugged grandeur of the massive, lofty mountain peaks,across the carpeted endless spread of the fertile prairies, the life giving flow of the many rivers, and the seemingly endless desert, each has life, action and exciting dramatic things happening peculiar to that area. As it is impossible for us to know all there is to explore over such a wide spectrum, let's envision the fun, beauty, yes, and entertainment, nature built into a ten-acre wood lot that comes up sharp in my memory. About one-third of a mile west on the Stone point Free Methodist Church on the State Road to Hastings you come to the Hilton Farm way up on a high hill on the north side of the road, with a ravine and brook running down beside it and across the road. The Hiltons were typical, hard working, conservative, homespun folks ' strong, big-boned, rangy people, both the women and men and their big hearted hospitality made everyone feel at home and welcome. Back of their big two-story house and red barn the fields reach on backup a slight grade to a fine hardwood lot of oak, walnut, beech and a couple of hundred maple trees. The clean straight rows of beans and the checkerboard marking of the cornfield as they used to plant it ' in hills every 3 feet so it could be cultivated each way and easier to cut and shock by hand in the fall' made a pretty sight. There the cornfield came up to the zig-zag split rail fence that closed in the wood lot, a section had been let down so you could drive on a trail that followed the slant of the hill back up to their sugar shanty. A rail fence was easy and economical to built and required no wiring orpinning and could be moved any place, opened up for a gateway anywhere and closed right up again, required no painting and if you didn't need it anymore, made good stove wood and a nice place for the rabbits to hop from corner to corner and give the dogs chasing them fits, usually, because you didn't plow or cultivate up in the corners, you would find tall stalks of Mullen with their plush-like leaves and yellow flowers, thistles and burdocks, etc., growing in them, making a hiding place for snakes and mice. If you left the trail and cut through the trees you would find it carpeted with patches of blue violets, Dutchmen's trousers, jonquils and lilies of the valley peeping up from under wide-leaved skunk cabbage, etc or just at the right time, and overnight, sponge mushrooms would pop out and make such a feast when soaked in salt water and fried in butter. Now that it's June, every little breeze will send acurtain of sound rustling and whispering a different note as it flows through the many shapes and types of leaves. The leaves glisten as they turn sideways and the sun makes dancing patterns of sun and shadow on the dead leaves on the ground, and here and there a tree blown down to climb up on and walk around the limbs sticking up, or, if a beech tree, fill my pockets with the little sweet-tasting triangular shaped nuts, so hard to hold on and bite the shell off of. Up a knoll in a little clearing at the northwest section of the woods stands a 12 x 20 log sugar shanty, with a door in the middle of each side and a pole rafter roof covered with sheets of tin. Inside there are 2 arch fire pits, 4' x 8' x 3' deep and a wide chimney to handle both of them. The 6" deep pans that will be used to boil the sap next spring are turned bottom side up and the squirrels, owls, etc, have taken up residence for the summer. Outside, the big wooden storage tank is covered and the wooden buckets nested together and piled high. The spring comes, they will have to be soaked to swell up tight before tapping starts. By the north end, outside, is a big pile of dead logs picked up through the woods to use next spring. Now that we have night clubs, topless barmaids, etc., for tired businessmen, it must have been very dull and monotonous for a farmer in his field back then. But wouldn't you believe that as he ties his team in the shade and sits down on a log in the woods to eat his lunch he could almost be charged a tax for entertainment, as he takes off his hat and mops his face with the usual bandanna ' the air conditioned, sweet clover scented breeze is wafted to him, as he lights his pipe he can watch a couple of fox squirrels play and hide from each other or a Blue Jay pestering the devil out of a red squirre lplaying to close to her nest and a big bumblebee zips from flower to flower, yellow pollen sticking to his legs like velvet. If he sits real quiet, he may see a chipmunk cram his cheeks full of beechnuts and scurry away down the rail fence to some place he is storing them for winter. So you see, if one has the right attitude, and an awareness of the God given things around us, we optimistically carry a feeling that all will be as well with us as it is for natures' own. Each day starts new and it's a day we can make of it whatever ambition, imagination and ingenuity we dream up. As the hot summer simmers down to school days again, the winds become a little stronger, and as we drift into the crisper nights and a slight frost catches up with our plants uncovered, the woods take on a different tone. The dried leaves have a more metallic rattle as the trees sway to a change in tempo and the woods become a tapestry of color as the maples, oaks and sycamores take on every shade of the rainbow. Many now blow loose andsail down the sun dappled brook, eddying this way and that like a ship without a rudder. If we could see, we would find the black and white striped skink wandering off to see his mate, or a raccoon come out of his big hole and backdown the tree like a bear and go fishing in the brook with his handy, monkey paws for frogs or minnows on a moonlit night. The squirrels have long since buried plenty of walnuts and hickory nuts in the leaves for winter and, as the fall rains come, they will have to be very careful as the farmer, his harvest in, will be sitting quietly at the foot of some tree waiting for them to come out in sight and, bang! Bang! he will wind up having his pink bones picked bare on Sundays' dinner table. Now the birds are collecting in the bare branches and whirl and circle in clouds of spirited excitement, seemingly impatient (like uskids going to town) to start their flight south. The wind takes on a mournful sound as if grieving the loss of the beautiful plumage and dreading the bitter, bare days ahead. At night you will be awakened by the big Canadian geese flying in "V" formation, hundreds of them in each flock, and we know that farther north the snow is already coming down. We at home have dug our potatoes and filled the big bin at the end of the basement, shucked loads of black walnuts and dried them on the roof and made a 30-gallon crock of sauerkraut, salted it and have it in the cellar with a plate and a big stone on it. The apples are picked and we have dug a big pit on high ground in the garden, lined it with clean straw and after putting in apples, turnips, etc., covered it with straw and piled dirt deep over the whole thing. Now we have a little snow every now and then and work winds down to a slower pace of cutting wood for winter and putting bundles of straw around the baseboards of the house outside to shut out the wind. We get the "cutter" out for trips to church and town and start nagging the folks to set a date to drive up to Grandma Barnum's at Woodland to feast on chicken and dumplings, mince and pumpkin pies, and roister around with our cousins, aunts and uncles. All fall dad has had four hogs penned up and has been crowding them full of bushels of corn so when it turns cold and starts to freeze the time has come to butcher. We have worked down through all the hams, bacon, sausage, etc., and finished out the summer on salt pork which my mother made taste real good by parboiling it to get the salt out and then frying it in a batter like you do chicken now. Well, this was a long looked for day, but one very rough on me, for I couldn't stand it to see them catch the pigs and stick them so they bled to death. They usually weighed two or three hundred pounds, some maybe 400. It was quite a process to go through and, as you will see, they saved everything but the squeal. First they would take a barn door off and put it across a couple of big logs or saw horses. We had a big iron kettle (like the kind the cannibals cook in) over a fire to boil the water. They had a big wooden barrelfull of boiling water set at an angle off the edge of the platform and with a special handle hooks in the back legs, two men would hoist the hog into the barrel of boiling water. Then, when scalded, they had saucer-shaped metal scrapers with wooden handles in the middle to scrape the hair off. If the hogwas too big for the barrel, they poured the water on it and covered it with a blanket. Then they were hung up on a pole to be dressed out and the fun began. First, fresh side pork or tenderloin would be sent around to the neighbors, and boy is fresh tenderloin good. Then dad would cut them down the middle and pool out the big sheets of lard, trim out the ribs and cut out the hams and shoulders. Which were not trimmed down close like those we see now. These werubbed with salt and pepper and hung in a big hollow tree section we had for a smokehouse, along with slabs of bacon. We would make a whole barrel of salt side pork and gallons of sausage, which mother would fry and the same with ham then bury it under lard in five gallon crocks. We would cook and pickle the hearts and tongues. The jowls and ears, etc., were cleaned, boiled and ground up for jellied head cheese. For days mother would have the big clothes boiler bubbling on the stove with chunks of fat to make the lard. Then the residue of cracklings was put out in the back yard and leaked through a layer of wood ashes to make soft soap. It looked like slimy ember Vaseline, but she made good use of it on that old scrub board. Sometime in the winter we would kill and dress a steer and save a quarter which would keep frozen up in cold weather. After thanksgiving, we counted the days till Christmas,which was nothing like today. All were money poor and you might get a pair of mittens, scarf or stocking cap that grandma or mother had knit, maybe a musical top, the girls a doll, or maybe a new sled for all of us to use. I remember my first skates were "bob skates," and my dad went down to watch me try them out on the pond back of the barn. Well, it was a coat of rubber ice, not too strong, and when I got around on the north side, I broke through where a spring came in, got scared and ran back across the pond to my dad, breaking through every step. It was shallow so all I got was wet. In later years we got clamp-on skates and my dad and I would take on the rest of the neighborhood in various games. At the Martin School we always had a pageant, with songs, etc., which I hated. We had wax candles, red paper bells, strings of popcorn and twisted crepe paper on the trees. Can't for the life of me see why we never burned the school down. At home we would hang up our stockings for a week before, but got mostly apples, or something my dad made in them. Winters were cold and steady. Usually the now would come by Thanksgiving and keep piling up to a foot or two for all winter long. There were no cars and the neighbors would start out with the team and sleighs and a big scoop shovel and cut through. I can remember Dr. McIntyre coming down from Woodland when mother was sick. He had a pair of driving horses and the snow was up to their bellies ' and the mailman wouldn't even come. Then the sun began to climb higher in March and we had freezing nights and warm days, it was time to make syrup. This was a 24 hour a day job. I remember spring up to Hibbon's one spring and I can see right now, as I stood up by the shack, Willard down in the valley crossing the snow-banked stream with the big tank on the sled-like deal they pulled through the woods with one horse. There were buckets everywhere many as two on one tree, and you could hear them "drip, drip, drip," almost a steady stream. The buckets were wooden, made like they made barrels, with wood bands around them. They would fill up twice a day. The big storage tank was kept full all the time. Inside the shack, a roaring log fire under both big pans boiled away, sending off a sweet maple smell and as a scum would form on top, and they had a long pole skimmer to lift the gummy froth off. They had a piece of fat pork in a swab to run around the edge of the pan so the syrup wouldn't boil over. At night they would hard boil eggs in the sap pans and I've heard they sometimes cleaned chickens inside and wrapped them in wet clay and threw them in the coals to roast. When done, the clay cracked off taking the feather with it. I loved to watch and when they were cooking the syrup down for maple sugar, if it got to the waxy stage, we would roll up a big snowball and pour strings of it on to cool like taffy. It took quite a few gallons to last till the next year, so I never heard of anyone mention the word diet. All winter long we would have 4 to 6 sour buckwheat cakes and sausage which mother seasoned well with sage and pepper. For pies we had mincemeat, gooseberries, cherries, etc. Mother would peel and quarter apples in the summer and dry them like prunes and hang a whole flour sack full of them up until she needed a pie or two, and then you just cooked them up again. Dad would take a load of apples down to Kaiser's Mill by the dam at Nashville and we kids would come home with the bellyache and hang on our stomach over the top rail of the fence by the yard. The barrel of cider dad brought home would ferment, and make plenty of vinegar for sour pickles and pickling pig's feet, hearts and tongue. One of the best shows nature puts on is the built-up drama and orchestrations of a summer thunderstorm. As you take off your straw hat and mop your forehead from hoeing in the garden, the hot humid air seems to take on an unexplainable, hesitating kind of expectance of things to happen and, as a gentle soft breeze fitfully fills and stops, you can hear at first a muted rumble of thunder, and like the lens on a camera, quick flashes of light and shadow. Soon the big thunderheads boil up and the chain forked lightening flicks back and forth like a darting snake's tongue. Now the storm is coming up fast and you feel a sense of danger and excitement, when deafening crash and blinding flash both come together. You feel the hairs on your arm prickle and smell the acid sulpher odor in the air. As the clouds move on east, it settles down to a steady rain and filling my picket with apples and getting a hunk of salt from the barrel in the granary, I climb up in the hayloft and listen to the rain pound the tin roof like an artillery barrage. As the sun comes out and the chickens scurry out clucking and clucking back and forth as they rush here and there picking up worms the rain has brought to the surface. How the garden brightens up as if a new lease on life has come and the weeds do twice as good, so' back to the hoeing.