We’re getting ready for our seventh annual Ohio Barn Conference this weekend. I wrote this for the program:

Where Did Your Barn Go?

Thinking back to when the grandkids were young and spent much of their summer vacations on his farm, doing chores, collecting eggs, “helping” the farm hands and thinking of their own ways to have fun, Bill couldn’t help but remember how many hours his grandchildren spent playing in the old red barn. He thought about the days when the kids would seem to disappear into the hay mow for hours to return with great discoveries to tell him about.

“ Grappah, grappah! There’s widdle baby kitties in the barn and their mommy wet us touch ‘em!”

“I didn’t know,” said Bill not wanting to spoil their surprise.

He remembered how his grappah had spent many days “sprucing up” the old red barn by nailing siding boards back tight, replacing broken panes of glass and making sure the manure in the cow stalls didn’t pile up around the great wooden posts that always reminded Bill of tree trunks when he was only a boy. He thought about how his grappah would take that tall wooden ladder and go up to replace each slate that had broken and given way under the winter’s snow. He would always say “It only takes a day to fix this roof, but if we keep it fixed this old red barn will last forever.”

“ Grappah, grappah! We can see the sky from inside the barn!”

“Oh really? I didn’t know,” he said not wanting them to know he really did.

That old wooden ladder had gotten too weak to use years ago and everybody told him “No one even knows how to fix those old slate roofs anymore.” So Bill did his best to not think about the rain coming in and tried especially hard not to think about what his grappah had told him. He didn’t really use the old red barn for much anymore except a playhouse in the summertime for the grandkids, but they were getting older and spent more time playing computer games and listening to music on their iPods than they did playing in the old red barn.

“ Grappah?” said Bill’s now teenage grandson after taking a friend out to show him where he used to play, “Did you know there’s a hole in the floor that you can see through into the basement?”

“I didn’t know.” Said Bill knowing his grandson was smarter than that.

“ Bill, did you know there’s an ad in the Agricultural News that someone will pay CASH for our old red barn?” said Bill’s wife who was getting tired of watching the old red barn slowly fall into disrepair.

“I didn’t know, but I guess we ought to give them a call and get what we can for it before it falls down.”

Bill couldn’t help but feel badly the day the “Beam Boys” showed up to take down the old red barn. He was surprised to see them using chain saws to cut out the massive beams so they could be heaped onto the trailer. He was saddened when the foreman told him “We’re just going to saw it up into boards anyhow.” Somehow it didn’t make him feel any better knowing the boards that were cut from his old barn would become parts of mansions for those folk with money out west.

“ Grappah, where did your barn go?” asked now young father Billie who had come to visit from California with his young children who wanted to play in the old red barn that dadda had played in.

“I don’t know” said grappah Bill wishing ever so much it was true.

Rudy R. Christian

President/ Friends of Ohio Barns