To Fix The Barn
My family has a discussion going on, whether to fix my Uncle Sam’s old barn. It was a huge old three-story barn, a left over relic when my uncle bought the property he never farmed the property but he kept horses so the building did have some purpose. All of our families except for Uncle Sam were city people. None of us were from around there we came from all over, so to us as kids that barn was a magical place. A three-story playhouse, with stairways ladders trap doors. So large we played Frisbee and even wiffle ball upstairs complete with indoor rope swing. We played hide an go seek and don’t know for sure we ever found everyone. So much room the boys would play upstairs and the girls down or vice versa but there was always room for everyone.
Now my Uncle was getting on in age and wanted to move south and the question was is the barn an asset or an eyesore could or should it be repaired? Or should they just tear it down and sell the hand-hewn beams as architectural heirlooms. When it was built it was an incredible endeavor, easily over a hundred years old hand made with hand tools by craftsmen who put more than sweat in their work with more concerns of more than just payday It was so old and needed so much repair, it would cost a fortune. But should their toil and efforts be torn down to be sold off as just novelties? Wasn’t their effort to build such a structure with only their bare hands in the wilderness worthy of note and salvation?
Money we didn’t have and couldn’t recoup, but we loved the place it was precious to our hearts for us children it was freedom it was our free country. To adults it was just a dirty old barn they didn’t like it was off the muddy path from the house to them it was just a way to keep us out of their hair, a means to and end so it was all ours we could do what we liked. I will never get to play there again but if torn down no one will. The children of future generations will miss so much and never taste the freedom that existed there. Was it past its prime and just too late or could it be saved?
The cynical among us said its just and old barn not worth saving an impediment to their plans and just in the way, to hell with it! They claimed it wasn’t safe that barriers and signs should be put up to restrict access to it. Was the structure unsafe? Or did they just envy what they couldn’t control? The said it was out of date, obsolete a relic of past glories that the world had moved on and these structures were holding the future back
Some of us saw it only as a resource what we could get out of it, to hell with future generations take the money and run. I in my idealism thought of the joy to have had this place in my life. Didn’t I owe anything to future generations? Hadn’t they preserved it for me at great expense? I can still close my eyes and think back to those times and remember to feel for just one second what it was like to be free.
The debate goes on, to fix a beautiful old barn a useful structure from an earlier time and return her to her former glory, to tear her down to say her days are done, or just let her collapse under the weight of neglect denial and self interest. But as I close my eyes and think of her now I see in fading paint barely legible on it’s side in tall letters it said The United States of America
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