The "Other Place"

In Overland Park, KS and Mason City, IA, The Other Place is a Sports Bar & Grill. In the Hill Country of Texas near New Braunfels, The Other Place is a resort on the Comal River. But for me, The Other Place was, is and always will be the farmstead north about a quarter mile from where I grew up and on the west side of the road.
In my memory, there was a barn with attached hay shed, a corn crib, a hog house, a round steel grain bin and an eight by ten portable structure we referred to as the cabin. At one time there had been a farmhouse which was destroyed by a fire.
The majority of the land my Dad farmed was on the west side of the road. We had cattle in the two large pastures, feeder pigs in the hog house lot, and for a few years baby pheasants in a brooder house the gun club members moved in. In other words, chores to do twice a day.
Once my sister and I were old enough to "pike off" by ourselves, the other place became one of our play sites - the area for many of our pretend games of cowboys and indians. The little cabin might be our ranch house or the sheriff's office. On days we weren't playing cowboys and indians, it was our play house. There was an old horsehair sofa, a wood burning stove and a table which could be fastened up out of the way, but dropped down and held by chains when in use.
Mom said at one time and old fellow used to live there. I think his name was Brady Ankrum. Brady was an orphan raised by his grandmother. When she died, he came to Corning because he had an aunt living there. He must have been deaf, as his obituary says he attended a deaf school as a youngster. I don't know how long he lived in the little cabin, maybe only for a summer while he worked for our landlord. Maybe the story is just one of my sort of remembered childhood legends.
West of the cabin was a small grove of locust trees which served as one of our camps. It was a good place to camp, but we had to watch out for the indians sneaking up on us through the woods. (One summer my cousin and two other boy scouts from town did camp out there overnight.)
What I remember most about the locust trees, other than playing there, were their long thorns and the heavenly smell when the trees were in bloom. Mom warned us about getting stuck by the thorns because they were poison and if we ran one of them in our arms or legs we could die. She probably just told us that so we would be careful (it worked!), but it probably also added to the allure of the place.
Other things I remember about the other place: the pond and the raft my brother and neighbor built to play on; the year of drought when a well digger came and 'witched' for water; the junk ditch where years later in search of neat old bottles all we found were dozens and dozens of ketchup bottles. Mostly I remember walking up to the other place with my Mom to cut asparagus from near where the house had been or with my Dad to watch him scoop corn out of the bin and scatter for the hogs.
The Other Place.....another time.