Sepia Saturday 177 Fences

This week's prompt immediately reminded me of several  fence photos  and one nearly upside down boy, but finding them, ahh that took time.  I remember hanging upside down just like the  children in the Sepia prompt off the cross bars of swings or other things.  It was all the better to startle adults who would shout, "get off there right now before you fall and break your neck!"  And then would come warnings about too much blood going into  the head from upside down.  It never bothered any of us.  Today, I don't like an overly  upside down  tilt to my chair in the dentist office when I have exams and teeth cleaned and protest, as I did a couple weeks ago, "Better let me up for a while, too much blood going to my head."  Ahh how childhood warnings stick in the psyche and emerge so much later in life amongst our truisms. 

I snapped this photo of our late son, Steve in 1976 climbing over one of our pasture fences that were not all that sturdy.  He was 12 years old then.  Fences were a necessity when we lived in Newcastle in northern California because we had a bottom pasture with a pond and we and the neighbors had horses, which had to be corralled, "good fences make good neighbors."  This pasture  fence had a gate farther down the hill that could be opened but Steve could not bother with walking farther when he could go over.  I remember shouting many warnings about this activity to no avail because he was typical country roughneck boy,  always tearing holes in his pants and shirts climbing over  fences to shortcuts.  

I don't know how I happened to have the camera with me just in time to snap this but I must have yelled something, like, "you are going to break your neck and go over upside down someday yet.....walk down the hill to the gate."  He  never did.  There in the left lower corner is  a glimpse of Cookie, one of  our German  shepherds who went wherever Steve went on the hillsides, she could not have climbed over that fence  but she would have found a way under because wherever he went, she shadowed.  Steve's birthday is this coming week, we will still feel pangs from loss although after 5 years we have accepted.

It was less than half a mile all the way down that old dirt road to the pond, lower pasture, too far for a boy on foot to be bothered walking to reach a gate when he could hop over and run through the pasture.  The following photo shows how run down those fences had become by 1980, weather and age taking a toll and necessitating  replacement at a healthy investment.  By that time we had given up our horses so it was not as critical to mend and keep up fences.  I will have to copy this and send to a neighbor who still lives back there.  Today that old dirt road has been paved and before we sold off, many homes had been built farther down on subdivided and developed property, making the old dirt path a daily speedway.  It was just one more reason why we no longer wanted to live there on those seven acres.  Country life was going away.   

I took a photography class in 1981 which included film development and working only with black and white photography.  I took and developed this photo  March 1981 showing the partial replacement  from run down rail fence to post and barb wire along the upper pasture.  I was advised that the photo was too busy and to focus down, but today I am glad I have this "busy shot."  We no longer live there and it does bring back the memories.  I tried to post it as an extra large photo but my blog lay out will not permit it, so here it is a bit smaller than I would like. 

This has been my Sepia post for the prompt of upside down urchins on fences.  To see what others have shared this week, click this link to the Sepia site, an international community.  http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com/2013/05/sepia-saturday-177-18-may-2013.html