Old Barn--- Great Memories.

Well this barn has been here longer than I have. It is located on what we call the upper farm, here at Clinton Camp farm. It used to be a Hop Barn back when. By the 50's it became a storage building for farm machinery for our Case dealership and dairy farm.
Back in the Sixties, 63 till 65, I met a 14 year old girl that I liked a lot. I was 16, and had a drivers license. We dated and went to the usual High Scool, Friday night dances and all that stuff.
There were times when we wanted to be alone, where knowone could find us. Most of the local parking places were well known. and lots of pranksters knew them.
Well that old barn always had enough room for a car to back into, and close the doors.
When that gal turned 17 we got married.
We built a home and a family,
Our kids are all grown up and living their own lives.
Asked the wifey when we were going by the barn, this evening, if she wanted to try it out just for old times.
Well, shuut the uncle backed in the 6B Kneverland plow and the hitch was just inside the door. Shucks.
Any of you have memories of your special parking place, with that special preson???
Loren, the Acg.

Been thru seven or eight of them and I guess none of them were special, there ain't none of them still around. Still debating on whether or not to keep looking.

Loren great story. My girlfriend (wife) lived along a railroad track. We would walk the service road at night. Billy Jo Spears wrote a song about it. Blanket on the ground. She still gets a twinkle in her eye when we hear it on the radio.

Great story Loren!
My wife and I once thought we would go "parking" just for old
time sake, but we were on a motorcycle in Wisconsin.
It was just getting dark and we stopped at a state park.
We weren't there 60 seconds before the mosquitoes drove us off!
Oh well, all's well that ends well. LOL

The place I remember the most was on the dam overlooking Horsetooth Reservoir 'watching' the midnight submarine races.

My wife and I were at nieces wedding today. During the evening they asked all of the married couples to get out on the dance floor. Then as we danced the DJ asked all married less than ten years to leave the floor, then those married fifteen years and so on. by the time he got to thirty years there were plenty of people around our age that had stepped away, and all the others started applauding for the ones still dancing. Finally it was down to my wife and I and one other couple. They beat us by five years. But it was surprising how few our age had been married for more than thirty years.

The dam in Rockford had red, blue, and white lights that shined on the falls. In the winter, the mist froze and built up ice. Went there a few times. Also old dirt road close to the school. We called it Lover's Lane. It's all paved now with houses. One place I would NEVER park is in a cemetery!

Larry

When my 2nd wife and I were dating, we used to regularly hang out in what had been the control room at an old abandoned NIKE Missle site on top of the Santa Monica Mountains. You could look out the windows and see all of the Los Angeles Basin on one side, and the entire San Fernando Valley on the other.

Doc

Grave yards work out great for parking sometimes.

Got a call from an Air Force buddy at three in the morning to come to the county jail and bail him out. He was parking in the graveyard with the sherrif"s daughter and got caught by one of the deputies. It all worked out for him because he ended up getting married to the daughter. Also got a job as a deputy when he left the AF.

Backed up a "55 Chevy all the way back into an empty old trench silo, real cozy and quiet.

I had 1959 Renault Dauphin it was small gramped and well used. Wouldn't want to try that again. Once while parked behind some trees all of a sudden the car lit up as a CHP stuck his flashlight in my open window. I rolled it up hit the starter and reverse all at the same time almost ran the poor guy over getting back on the road.
Walt

Curiosity has me, is that barns, sparking spots, or wimin folk? joe-

One of our favorite parking spots was an abandoned Atlas missle transport road. It had been built to go around a railroad overpass that was too small to fit the parts of the Atlas missles they were hauling in about 1960. The road was paved, but used by no one after the Atlas program was discontinued.

The only problem was that trains went by. I bet the engineers" attention left the tracks when they went by the parked cars on that section of road.

I always liked that road, because there was no problem of ever getting stuck there, which WAS a problem in a couple of other places we parked. But I will let that story remain untold.

Well, (ahem) getting back to barns, neither Marilyn or I have much affection for barns. Both of us grew up working our butts off in barns in our younger days and I continued to do so for the first 25 years of our marriage. However, the barn is still the symbol of the good old days when life was maybe not easier but much simpler. The last barn in section 10 went down about 3/4 mile from me this spring. It was a plain old rectangular barn that had not had anything done to it for probably 60 years, but the walls and roofline were still straight as a string, a testament to the good work of a building crew long gone. It sat there alone in the field for a good many years after the rest of the buildings met their demise. The last family to live there moved away sometime in the late fifties. I remember the bus stopping there when I was just a little squirt and there were a couple of kids, but that's about it. In my neck of the woods we have or had very few big old ornate, fancy barns, unlike eastern Iowa and on east where the big grand ones still stand. I'm guessing the reason ours aren't fancy was a lack of cheap native lumber here on the barren prairies.

Oh yes, the back seat of my 59 Chevy was nice and wide but a big car like that was harder to hide in this area with no natural landscape to park behind. The 62 Rambler with the fold down seats was a little too dangerous if we were caught and had to do a fast getaway. (fast? 196 cube six cylinder?) The front seat was slid way ahead and the seat back was folded way down. Pretty hard to drive that way. There, I covered both subjects! oh yes, I still have the rambler. Jim