THE WHITE PICKET FENCE

We had an airplane picture taken of our farm buildings in the 1950’s. You can see the white picket fence stretching from the woodshed to the driving shed clearly.Grandma gave me the money one year to build it.It was my summer project.I had no electric tools just a hand saw.I measured the distance,how many post I needed,how many two by fours,and how many cedar boards I would need to cut into pickets.There was an old broken down page wire fence there with a style I had built over it so we could get into our garden .This had to be removed and cleaned up first.I went to dad’s post pile to get the six to eight new posts I would need to hang the fence on.I had to peel the bark off the posts with the draw knife to make them shiny and clean.We had a one man post hole digger that was just like a shovel with a lever on the one side so when you pushed the handle down ,it would close a scoop on the shovel and when you pulled the shovel out of the hole all the earth would come out with it.I had to measure the boards cut them the right length,then measure a vee for the picket and saw it off by hand.This was quite a bit of work and took quite a bit of time.I made a gate in the fence with hinges so we could walk out into the garden.Then I had to paint the fence white with a paint brush.I was pretty proud of that fence.I probably painted it a few times over the years. The white picket fence was still there when dad sold the farm.







Jim

July 17 2010.