something to cry for and something to hunt. - clondon: I posted this photo yesterday because I...

13th January 2012

Photo reblogged from To the midwest with 156 notes

clondon:
I posted this photo yesterday because I drove past it, and thought it was funny. Then I found the story behind it, and I no longer find it funny. It’s beautiful.

Twelve feet or so off the edge of State Road 103, which runs through the small town of Newbury, New Hampshire there sits a squarish, flat brown-gray slab of rock roughly the height of a man.
About 25 years ago, across from the rock, there sat a tidy, cedar-shingled house in whose backyard a dozen chickens pecked about. Their eggs made breakfasts (and a tiny sideline business) for a family named the Rules — whose daughter Gretchen was pretty, smart, wistful, and 16.
There was a shy boy, also wistful, also a farmer, whose name is forgotten today. He pined for Gretchen Rule. He cast about awkwardly for ways to tell her or show her…then he hit upon the rock. One moonlit night, he secretly wrote on it, in eight-inch high, spray-painted letters, “CHICKEN FARMER, I LOVE YOU. ” And the girl must have seen it, and possibly even guessed the author, but nothing came of it.
The message endured for years, though brambles grew up to obscure it, and the letters, once so bold and white, began to fade. Gretchen Rule went away to Harvard, then on to life. The boy, whoever he was — or is — became a man. The rock grew into a relic, a love note out of time.
One night - ten, perhaps 12 years ago, the brambles were mysteriously cut away and the message was repainted and renewed: “CHICKEN FARMER, I STILL LOVE YOU,” it proclaimed. And every two years or so, barely noticed, the letters would be freshened and the brambles cut away.
Then, in April of 1997, an unknown caller complained of “graffiti” to the Dept. of Transportation. By nightfall the same day, a three-foot square of rust-colored primer was all that was left of a shy boy’s long-ago love. A week passed, and a new sun rose on New Hampshire’s stubbornest love: “CHICKEN FARMER, I STILL LOVE YOU.” But bolder this time: thicker-lettered, almost crude, and defiantly painted rather than sprayed.
In Newbury, the inspired townspeople took up a ” Petition for the Status Quo” to protect their landmark. The government responded with a letter, promising that the Chicken Rock’s message would be forever safe. And it is.
Full article.

this is one of those things that would be cute in a movie but creepy in real life

I posted this photo yesterday because I drove past it, and thought it was funny. Then I found the story behind it, and I no longer find it funny. It’s beautiful.

Twelve feet or so off the edge of State Road 103, which runs through the small town of Newbury, New Hampshire there sits a squarish, flat brown-gray slab of rock roughly the height of a man.

About 25 years ago, across from the rock, there sat a tidy, cedar-shingled house in whose backyard a dozen chickens pecked about. Their eggs made breakfasts (and a tiny sideline business) for a family named the Rules — whose daughter Gretchen was pretty, smart, wistful, and 16.

There was a shy boy, also wistful, also a farmer, whose name is forgotten today. He pined for Gretchen Rule. He cast about awkwardly for ways to tell her or show her…then he hit upon the rock. One moonlit night, he secretly wrote on it, in eight-inch high, spray-painted letters, “CHICKEN FARMER, I LOVE YOU. ” And the girl must have seen it, and possibly even guessed the author, but nothing came of it.

The message endured for years, though brambles grew up to obscure it, and the letters, once so bold and white, began to fade. Gretchen Rule went away to Harvard, then on to life. The boy, whoever he was — or is — became a man. The rock grew into a relic, a love note out of time.

One night - ten, perhaps 12 years ago, the brambles were mysteriously cut away and the message was repainted and renewed: “CHICKEN FARMER, I STILL LOVE YOU,” it proclaimed. And every two years or so, barely noticed, the letters would be freshened and the brambles cut away.

Then, in April of 1997, an unknown caller complained of “graffiti” to the Dept. of Transportation. By nightfall the same day, a three-foot square of rust-colored primer was all that was left of a shy boy’s long-ago love. A week passed, and a new sun rose on New Hampshire’s stubbornest love: “CHICKEN FARMER, I STILL LOVE YOU.” But bolder this time: thicker-lettered, almost crude, and defiantly painted rather than sprayed.

In Newbury, the inspired townspeople took up a ” Petition for the Status Quo” to protect their landmark. The government responded with a letter, promising that the Chicken Rock’s message would be forever safe. And it is.

Full article.

this is one of those things that would be cute in a movie but creepy in real life

Source: clondon