HERE IS THE REAL MEANING OF FREEDOM

When I was a kid of about fourteen, growing up on a farm in Soythistle Township, in Bindweed County, Indiana, my father, who was the consummate outdoors man, ran a trap line.  He had a couple dozen steel traps and would set them in various spots along the Tippecanoe River and its small tributaries.  He would trap for small fur bearing animals, an occasional mink but mostly muskrat.  He sold the pelts to Benny Snyder who ran a junk yard in a nearby town. The unpardonable sin was to run another man's trap line.  That is to spring a trap that was not theirs or, even worse, to retrieve an animal from another man’s trap.

   One day, it was summer; he brought home a trap with a large raccoon, alive but with the steel trap firmly gripping its leg.  I don’t know how long the animal had been in the trap but it had already started to chew its leg off.  The raccoon was put next to the telephone pole that stood in the side yard between the house and the barn.  There he stayed for an entire afternoon, patiently chewing away at his leg until my father finally dispatched it with his .22 rifle.

A real Cavalier, my old man.

I think the analogy about freedom is pretty evident.  Freedom has a price.

THE SHADOW-------LIVE FREE OR DIE