When I'm walking up the ramp to the "Big Barn", I often think back when as kids we used it for several multi purposes. It was always and continues to be referred to as "The Barn Ramp".  The older I get, the smaller it looks. Of course, from a "kid perspective", it was the highest and steepest ramp around.  As kids, we had a lot of fun and adventures on it. As a matter of fact, even as an "adult", I still have fun on it (when no one is looking that is).

 

The main fun "Barn Ramp" uses was to coast down it in our trusty old Radio Flyer red wagon. The wagon was old and the red paint was faded and chipped and bore the dents and scars of years of use and abuse by we kids. It had a big golden rough spot near the middle of the front where it was brazed by Heckleman's Sohio station. This was the result of Tim and me yanking too hard on it with full heavy loads of various objects and pulling out the pivot rivet of the steering system. We would pull the wagon to the top of the ramp and one or both of us would get in with the tongue pulled up against the front of the wagon to steer. We would gain a lot of speed as we coasted down the ramp. Occasionally when we reached the bottom of the ramp, we would suddenly turn the tongue sharply to the right or left thus causing a cool sideways spill. The momentum would cause us to roll around and around in the driveway. Looking back, it is a wonder that one of us never cut the steering right or left while on the way down and tumble over the side. Knowing us, we just may have, but I do not recall that we ever did that.  

 

The side of the barn ramp was also used as a launching pad for our balsa gliders. In addition, it also served as a launching pad when we played Superman and tried to "fly". I could never figure out why I could not fly like Superman, I even had a cape from an old sheet and I even did the running start and jump. I guess the main reason was that I did not look like George Reeves. After all the countless attempts jumping off the side of the ramp, my only accomplishment was to prove the law of gravity.

 

The sides of the ramp are filled with large boulders and other odd sized rocks and served as a great place to build stone forts, which were used to fend off the many raids from renegade Indians with our cap pistols. When we were older, BB guns replaced the cap guns. The one big problem with the BB guns was that we had to supply the BANG! Another big disadvantage was that there was no smoke to blow out of the barrel after successfully quelling an Indian attack. Oh well, the main thing was to keep our farm safe from the Indian raids.

 

At times, Tim and I would grab a sledgehammer and hit the top of the big boulders to see if we could split one. Maybe we were practicing to be on a Louisiana chain gang. As we struck the rocks with heavy blows, small pieces of it would hit us on the forehead and eyes. It's a wonder we didn't go blind! For that matter, of all the dangerous things we did, some of which are chronicled in many past stories, it's a miracle we're still alive!

 

One cool thing we used to do on the "Barn Ramp" was to grab one or more of our toy metal trucks and go up to the top of the ramp, then push them off the side at the highest point. They would tumble over the side over the rocks. Sometimes we would get a little bit of gas from the gas barrel and set one on fire, which resulted in a really neat "Hollywood flaming wreck".

 

At other times, the "Barn Ramp" was used for more practical things such as starting some of the tractors. We had Farmall tractors and due to various reasons, the starter wouldn't always work. On those tractors that had this malady, we would park them on top of the barn ramp. When we needed to use it, we would put it in gear and coast down the "Barn Ramp" and then let go of the clutch. Sometimes, it would start, and sometimes not. In the case of the latter, we would have to get another tractor that would start on its own (which may or may not have necessarily been the case), and hook the chain up and tow it up and down the road. From time to time, one of the tractors we had to park on top of the ramp to start would have our 2-row cultivator mounted on it. The hydraulic seals were worn out and when it was parked on top of the ramp, the two swing down stands had to be lowered down to the ground so the cultivator spades wouldn't slowly drop to the ground on each side. Now and then, we would forget to do this and as a result, the cultivator spades would be resting on the ground when we went to cultivate again. Since the tractor wouldn't start in order to lift them up, we had to coast down the ramp with them down. That would make big groves in the ramp and it certainly didn't do the cultivator teeth any good either.

 

As Tim and I got older, we also started to use the "Barn Ramp" for more practical purposes as well.  There were times that the battery in my 1955 Ford would send me nasty messages and I would have to park it at the top of the "Barn Ramp" and coast down to get it started. If one of the tractors with the bad starters were at the top, I would have to park it in front of the tractor and hoped that I needed my car before the tractor was needed. This, of course, was not always the case either.

 

The one thing I always wished was that there was a ramp on the other side of the barn too. When we baled hay and straw, we had to back the empty wagons down the ramp by hand. In a previous story, I have mentioned the disastrous outcome of this from time to time.

 

This story just illustrates another way Tim and I had fun as kids. We used anything to have fun. It's a good thing computers weren't invented then, or it's likely we would have rolled one of them over the side of the ramp just for the fun of it! Hmmm, you know what; in this day and age there are times I would like to roll my computer down the side of the ramp when Bill Gate's products lock up and then send me cryptic technical messages that I doubt that even he could understand!!!!