PIATT COUNTY - Those who sign up to take the barn tour this year may visit a working horse stable, a pioneer cemetery and Allerton Park, recently voted one of the state's seven wonders.

Children will be invited to build scarecrows at one of the 37 stops.

The tour presents an opportunity to see the antique tool collection of Stan Mackey, which represents seven decades of collecting.

Mackey, 92, estimates he has purchased about 2,000 tools in his lifetime, many of which will be on display.

"I just went to auctions and bought what I didn't have," Mackey said, adding he especially went after anything that was unusual.

His collection includes a mysterious-looking gadget that was used to wire together pickets to make a picket fence, a circa 1859 meat-grinder and stuffer and a device which allows one man to use a 5-foot-long cross-cut saw to fell trees.

At the Cisco area farm of John Mackey, Stan's son, there will be an array of tractors, plows and planters, including several dating to the 1930s.

Stan Mackey said he began collecting tools in the '30s, when he had to buy a new batch of wrenches because equipment was changing over from square nuts.

"When they went to hex nuts, they wouldn't work," he explained. "I threw all the wrenches in a bucket."

On one display board, Stan Mackey has 265 wrenches. Another display has 180 types of barbed wire.

Mackey, who worked on his 83rd corn crop last year, will available to talk to visitors during the tour.

Forrest Sawlaw, who served as Piatt County sheriff from 1978 to 2002, also will be on hand for conversation at his home.

While his house and barn are now part of an established residential neighborhood, Sawlaw said the homestead, built between 1892 and 1903, was on the east edge of town when he moved in during the early 1970s.

Unless it is sold before then, visitors might ask the former lawman to point out the gallows platform that is sitting near the gable-roofed barn.

The platform, which was built in 1869 and stored at the Piatt County Jail until its recent demolition, was never used. The platform was given to Sawlaw by the man who demolished the building.

"The only man ever hanged in Piatt County was lynched by an angry mob," Sawlaw said.

Sawlaw promises to have some historical photographs on display, as well as the hammer that was used to assemble his pegged barn.

Huey Freeman can be reached at hfreeman@herald-review.com or 421-6985.

If you go

WHAT: 10th annual Piatt County Barn and Historic Site Tour

WHEN: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 12 to 14

WHERE: Monticello and Willow Branch townships

COST: $15 per car

TICKETS: at Piatt County Museum, 315 W. Main St., Monticello, on days of tour

INFORMATION: Call 762-4731 or visit www.

piattmuseum.org/