The Old Barn
by Sue Tyner

I’m just an old barn, if only these old weather beaten boards could talk. The stories I could tell.

Going back about seventy or eighty years, around the time I was built I was a proud new building. My walls were smooth and new, my tin roof was silver and shiny, I had new stalls for the livestock to live in and new feeding troughs for their food. Horses, cows, chickens, cats, dogs, birds and other critters all lived in harmony in my new house. There was bright new farm machinery stored inside out of the weather. My, I was a proud barn. But look at me now, my walls are rough and weather beaten and some of my boards are missing, my roof is rusted and some pieces gone, blown away in storms. I am so lonely now with no one to visit me.

I remember when I had children playing inside my walls. They would slid down my hayloft into a pile of hay on the ground, climb my ladders, sit in my loft and dream about the exciting things they would do and be when they grew up. I was a sanctuary on many rainy afternoons when children would come inside the safe dimness of my interior. They loved the softness of hay under their feet, the odor of my wood, the musty smell of the aged leather harnesses hanging on pegs, climb up and down my ladders and jump and play on the farm machinery stored inside. On other days I would only have one or two visitors. They would climb the ladder to my loft and sit in the peaceful silence which was broken only by the chitter-chitter of nesting sparrows in my eaves, an occasional mouse scurrying by or the distant shouts of the neighborhood boys and girls playing cops and robbers, hide and seek, crack the whip, cowboys and Indians and other outdoor games.

In the spring I loved the sweet smell of new mown hay being stored in my loft and in the fall, corn was gathered and stored in my bins as winter feed for the livestock. I was happy and useful for all kinds of things in my youth.

I remember in the early fall the smell of new cut tobacco being hung in my loft to season before it was ready to be handed off and taken to market. I remember how much I enjoyed my owners getting the tobacco ready. There would be lots of people inside my walls who had come to help, talking and laughing as they worked. How I long for those days again.

Now, I have ivy clinging to my clapboard siding, weeds are fringed along my outside walls, the roof is rusted and loose flapping in the wind and letting in the sunshine and rain to soak my interior. Mice have gnawed my walls and termites have pitted them.

Yet, despite my deteriorating condition, I can still give the same age-old sense of security and warmth to strangers passing by. I can offer safety from the storm and create something memorable and magical even in my rough surroundings. If only they would come to visit again.

Click here to see the photograph which inspired this story.