http://www.thebattlecreekshopper.com BATTLE CREEK SHOPPER NEWS Thursday, October 3, 2024 29
See DNR on 35RIDE CALHOUN
CAN GET YOU
THERE.
Imagine a community with fixed route buses, paratransit and on-demand vehicles. The Ride Calhoun initiative
will drastically enhance quality of life by allowing everyone to get where they need to go, like work, medical
appointments, college classes, and even the grocery store. It’s our goal to improve lives, one ride at a time.
Learn more at RideCalhoun.orgIt’s hard to keep a job if you
can’t get to work.
Vote November 5th
Many service clubs who will
be competing for the third annual
Golden Kettle Award have begun to
select dates and shifts for this major
competition.
If you and your club are interested
in joining this effort and support the
work of The Salvation Army, we
ask everyone – individuals, families,
school groups, service clubs, busi-
nesses, organizations and congrega-
tions – to get involved and help us
help others.
We look forward to everyone’s
support in this upcoming campaign.
CHRISTMAS
Continued from Page 22
BY JOHN PEPIN
Deputy Public Info. Officer
Mich. DNR
There’s a field I know that I often
drive past on my way to quiet and
contemplative places in the surround-
ing woodlands.
I always look, but there’s rarely
anything to see here but what was
once a hopeful landscape, from a
time that has long since passed away.
There’s no fence around the prop-
erty and no indications of who might
own this land. It’s a wide-open space
claimed now by the northwesterly
winds.
The one thing I always do see at
this place is a broken-down farm-
house.
The house is small and probably
housed a couple of people or maybe
a couple and a child.
It looks like it was built in the late
19th or early 20th century.
This house that was once a home
is nestled among a shelter of old and
crippled apple trees.
The trees look as old as the house
and are in a relatively similar condi-
tion.
At one point, this place was likely
eyed as productive farmland, a
homestead on a piece of ground
perched above the river valley.
When I stand at the edge of the dirt
road and kneel to take a photograph,
I can sense somehow that the dreams
of the people who lived here are still
present.
Mich. structures fading, fallen, but not forgotten
There’s a fullness in my heart that
saturates me with a feeling of happi-
ness and life, growing and working.
The feeling makes me want to lie
down in the grass and dream my own
dreams in the shadow of this simple
house.
The apple trees still fruit, with a
collection of yellow-green and pink-
blushed leftovers from last autumn’s
showing left in haphazard collections
in the grass and just off the end ofthe front porch steps.
When I try to visualize this place
when it was alive, it reminds me
of the black-and-white farmhouse
scenes from “The Wizard of Oz.”
It would not surprise me if this
place once had a water trough, wind-
mill, fencing, farm animals and a
scarecrow.
Today, I am the scarecrow, with
my old blue-and-white flannel shirt,
blue jeans and black boots, sittinghere like I fell off the wooden post
that held me up – just daydreaming.
I wonder who these people were,
when they left and where did they
go? Why is this old house left to
stand to slowly fall apart?
A lot of these rundown scenes are
“protected” by “No Trespassing”
signs, though I don’t suppose they
would do much to keep away a