Codger_64
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- Joined
- Oct 8, 2004
- Messages
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Like the title says, I finally figured out what is wrong with American youth today. Barns. Or rather the lack thereof. Few kids are growing up on farms these days and as much as I look, I don't see barns in the cities, though occasionally one is stll standing near a new subdivision where a farm once was. So kids don't have access to barns.
A barn is a huge, tall building, usually built of planks covering a rough-sawn or even round timber frame and roofed over with sheets of rusty silver tin. All good barns have a loft, an airy upstairs (though usually without stairs), accessed via a rough ladder (or two, sometimes three) with rungs too far apart for short legs. Sometimes topped with a trap door to keep men working there stacking hay from falling through.
Splinters abound, sharp nails here and there... occasionally weak board or a hole in the floor to avoid help one to become observant. Wasps, carpenter bees (baseball practice!), spiders and snakes make nature observations up close and personal. Not to mention bats, birds, possums and coons.
And then there are the critters that an active barn was built to house, in addition to their feed. Piglets growing into feeder pigs, into sows and boars or shoats, and into ham and bacon and lard. Good lessons in the circle of life. And handling the monotony of chores. Hot, cold, rain or shine, the pigs have to be fed, locked up and let out. And the cows and mules. No, you cannot take a day off from pumping water from the well. The animals depend on it. And you.
It doesn't take long after the dred of the chores passes until the day that you look forward to the morning and evening greetings from your charges who rush to their troughs and mows when they spy you, through the cracks in the wall boards approaching. In a short while, you grow to expect the symphony of sounds and then learn to recognize the individual voices. You don't even have to enter the barn to know that one of your charges hasn't come up from the pastures. Or that one is down sick or giving birth and not standing at it's feed trough. Kids will be kids and the temptation is strong to play tricks on them. A whistle from the house before you head to the barn. Or banging on a pot or fence post. Or feeding them all out of order, the horse before the hogs, the hogs before the chickens.
The loft was a magic place for kids though. It was a hideout. A fort. Or if there were still hay bales... a fort within a fort. The gable ends had doors that opened like those of Western saloons. From those ports a kid could spy on family, neighbors or approaching enemy cows in the pasture. For the more adventurous they were the doors of the plane to parachute into the battle from. And the hay crane, if the rope was weighted just right on the other end, made a Tarzan vine that one could swing from the loft on.
A barn also made a good "mad scientist"/Henry Ford workshop. A place to build impossible contraptions that would be recycled, parts and pieces, nails and all... into the next brainstorm. Dad had his farm shop for working on farm machinery, but some tools always wound up smuggled to the barn, usually (not always) those which were old and unused, spares or broken. Even Dad and Grandad were in on the act at times, stashing an old wooden flatbottom boat there when they got a new one, a WWII era Harley motorcycle frame under a pile of burlap bags. And a Model A in one closed off stall. Treasures for a kid with an imagination.
The nooks and crannies of the loft made good places to stash a cigar box of secret treasures. Or a cob pipe with a straw or grape vine stem and a rough twist of tobacco in an old Prince Albert or Garett Snuff can that was there more for bragging rights and to impress visiting cousins than for actual consumption. And when you felt like being alone to be sad or just to think and watch the dust motes, no better place than the barn.
Yep. No barns. That is what is wrong with kids these days.
Michael
A barn is a huge, tall building, usually built of planks covering a rough-sawn or even round timber frame and roofed over with sheets of rusty silver tin. All good barns have a loft, an airy upstairs (though usually without stairs), accessed via a rough ladder (or two, sometimes three) with rungs too far apart for short legs. Sometimes topped with a trap door to keep men working there stacking hay from falling through.
Splinters abound, sharp nails here and there... occasionally weak board or a hole in the floor to avoid help one to become observant. Wasps, carpenter bees (baseball practice!), spiders and snakes make nature observations up close and personal. Not to mention bats, birds, possums and coons.
And then there are the critters that an active barn was built to house, in addition to their feed. Piglets growing into feeder pigs, into sows and boars or shoats, and into ham and bacon and lard. Good lessons in the circle of life. And handling the monotony of chores. Hot, cold, rain or shine, the pigs have to be fed, locked up and let out. And the cows and mules. No, you cannot take a day off from pumping water from the well. The animals depend on it. And you.
It doesn't take long after the dred of the chores passes until the day that you look forward to the morning and evening greetings from your charges who rush to their troughs and mows when they spy you, through the cracks in the wall boards approaching. In a short while, you grow to expect the symphony of sounds and then learn to recognize the individual voices. You don't even have to enter the barn to know that one of your charges hasn't come up from the pastures. Or that one is down sick or giving birth and not standing at it's feed trough. Kids will be kids and the temptation is strong to play tricks on them. A whistle from the house before you head to the barn. Or banging on a pot or fence post. Or feeding them all out of order, the horse before the hogs, the hogs before the chickens.
The loft was a magic place for kids though. It was a hideout. A fort. Or if there were still hay bales... a fort within a fort. The gable ends had doors that opened like those of Western saloons. From those ports a kid could spy on family, neighbors or approaching enemy cows in the pasture. For the more adventurous they were the doors of the plane to parachute into the battle from. And the hay crane, if the rope was weighted just right on the other end, made a Tarzan vine that one could swing from the loft on.
A barn also made a good "mad scientist"/Henry Ford workshop. A place to build impossible contraptions that would be recycled, parts and pieces, nails and all... into the next brainstorm. Dad had his farm shop for working on farm machinery, but some tools always wound up smuggled to the barn, usually (not always) those which were old and unused, spares or broken. Even Dad and Grandad were in on the act at times, stashing an old wooden flatbottom boat there when they got a new one, a WWII era Harley motorcycle frame under a pile of burlap bags. And a Model A in one closed off stall. Treasures for a kid with an imagination.
The nooks and crannies of the loft made good places to stash a cigar box of secret treasures. Or a cob pipe with a straw or grape vine stem and a rough twist of tobacco in an old Prince Albert or Garett Snuff can that was there more for bragging rights and to impress visiting cousins than for actual consumption. And when you felt like being alone to be sad or just to think and watch the dust motes, no better place than the barn.
Yep. No barns. That is what is wrong with kids these days.
Michael
