Save the Barns

Reading the Rochester paper tonight I saw another Barn lost outside the city this time by a young lady who drove her car into it in the wee hours and somehow both her car and the Barn burned.She escaped but was charged with DWI.This Barn was out by Mendon Ponds Park one of Monroe Countys park system and it's a very large and beautiful park with rolling terrain and a rich glacial history of eskers and kettle drum ponds.In high school my parents house was above the far south end of Powder Mill Park which is about 5 miles away from Mendon Ponds.In the mid 70's when we ruled the area both parks were our high schools territory and the parks were seperated mostly by miles of country roads made for driving between.Pittsford was pretty much the last suburb south of Rochester in those days and so we were on the edge of well to do burb with country and the two parks were our playground.These were the days when 18 was the legal drinking age so add that to the drug culture of the time and we had a lot of fun.One early fall night in junior year several of us were in a friends dads medical supply van which was a ford with a Uhaul type back end.This one though was open from cab to storage area and we were over at Mendon Ponds and decided to put a picnic table from there in the back of the van.We did and were sitting at the table with the back door up playing cards ,drinking beer and smoking doobs when our friend decided we should drive over to Powder Mill and see what was going on.So off we went with the table and the party back door up over to the other park where a park ranger dude fell in behind us and when we pulled up in Shady Rest he asked us what the heck we were doing with a park oicnic table in the truck.We told him we had driven over from another park but since he had found us halfway through his park told us to quit telling him BS and get that damm table out of the truck and put it on the lawn before he called the police.So we did and I kept thinking late that fall when they rounded up all the tables before winter and stored them by the park office somebody from Mendon Ponds was going to call Powder Mill and say it's the strangest thing but our count shows we're missing a table from spring and the Powder Mill guy would say that's funny cause we have an extra table and the story would start of the migrating picnic table between parks.Of course the grounds guys who worked in both parks at the time were bigger heads than we were so they might not have actually counted but when you visit the parks these days it's like the secret police are watching your every move.You need a permit to do just about anything but drive through in your car and I like to think we caused that.