Head Stands on Barns

I was going through some of my archival photos and had forgeotten about this one. Yes, there are five men up there, three of which are standing on a 10 inch purline plate 40 feet in the air. That's scary enough, but two of them are doing headstands on the same 10 inch plate! The photo is from about 1900 when timber frame barns were still being built. By then expereinced crews of framers had notched and raised dozens and dozens of barns and probably became quite comfortable walking high up on timbers. Those days are gone now and even with  new timber frames today, many safety lines would be needed to be even up on a purline.