By Rick Houser-
For those of you who have read my columns you know I was born and raised on a farm on Fruit Ridge Road, three miles north of Moscow, Ohio. Not only was I raised there, I also married and we began our housekeeping there. I’m feeling safe in the fact that you all know where my world began and where I have come from since then and how much I attribute to my days down on that farm. I think that is where I developed my way of looking at the rest of the world and learned how people should expect to be treated and I in return learned how I wanted to be treated. From my days on the farm, I learned a work ethic and just what a wonderful world I lived in. (It has taught me to understand that the world is still a wonderful place.)
I kept my hands in the world of agriculture until the mid-80’s and even after that I still gardened on a small scale, and as the saying goes, I just have to let a little bit of dirt get in my shoes. What I am trying to say is I will always be in some way connected to the land. I still have an aerial photo of our farm that was taken in 1962 on a day when the place couldn’t possibly have looked any better. When I look at it, it shouts out to me to remember where I grew up. There of course was the house and we had several outbuildings that were strategically placed to create a kind of compound behind the house. All of this was in a low point on the farm and the fields all began to rise in every direction from those buildings. All that is except one.
Behind the house and up on a hill sat our barn. It was a large barn and I have always referred to it as a multi-purpose one. Being almost 50 feet in length and 35 feet in width and on one end from the stable floor to the roofs comb was over 45 feet. That stable was used to milk cows in and feed others when milking was done away with. Over the stable was the hay loft and also on the upper side of the barn was another large hay loft with a stable behind it. There was a grain bin that Dad used to store wheat in and over the hay lofts and in the driveway were tier rails to hang tobacco on. With its size and location I have always referred to it as the sentinel.
To me it was more than just a barn. It was the place to go as a boy. I can’t begin to count the hours I have spent playing up in that barn. To kids all hay mows are inviting but it seems this barn’s were the best ones in existence. Climb up in the hay and move some bales of hay around to make a fort and on rainy days as the rain would beat on the barn’s metal roof a little boy could lay there and as his mind was thinking of things to do next, he might just find himself waking up.
When I was around the age of 12, I found that the barn was where Dad and his crew worked a lot and yes, I had by then become a member of his crew. After Dad stopped farming, I took over and ran the crews. Just the size of the materials that held the structure together was impressive. Most cross ties are one foot by one foot in size but this barn had them two foot by two foot and were all hand hewn and held together by wooden pegs. Just think that one tree had to be that size and span over 35 feet. Many of the men who worked in the barn would comment on the size of the cross ties.
A couple of months ago my wife and I took a Sunday drive and we decided to go up Fruit Ridge and take a look at things. Fruit Ridge the road really hasn’t changed, it’s still a narrow county road that winds and climbs on its lower end and about halfway up it begins to flatten but still winds and bends. What has changed is that every person is gone and a new generation is now there.
The farms aren’t used nearly as much as when I was living there. The utility company bought about 3,000 acres to bury their fly ash on and several of the farms I worked on are gone with no way of knowing that beautiful and productive places did once exist. But when we got to our farm I thought I was ready to see the changes. The folks who bought the farm from Dad have aged just as I have. The house really did look nice and has been improved since I lived there. But the compound of buildings in the back is crumbling. Then I looked up on the hill and I wasn’t ready for what I saw. That majestic barn had given way to time and wear and fallen in. The symbol of what that place meant to me was gone.
Since that Sunday drive I have gone back to it in my mind, thought about it, and tried to understand. It was really troubling me as that signaled to me the end of something I thought would never ever be weakened but was exempt to the laws of nature. Then I looked around at folks my age and even more I looked into the mirror and saw the little boy who played in the hay loft was not there anymore. But the other night a friend and former classmate of my wife’s stopped by and delivered a great gift. She presented her with a four-foot long piece of the old barn’s siding with “Welcome” painted on it. I learned that the owner of the farm is having the barn disassembled and will be repurposing the lumber. After an evening of thinking about this I was able to smile.
You see, there is no longer a purpose for the barn. There aren’t milk cows or tobacco or wheat to store or even cattle to feed. However the siding is still in great demand and it in a way has a new purpose. So I look at my “Welcome” sign, or I guess my wife’s sign, and am so happy to have it. This is the way it is or should be for us. As we age a lot of our purpose is not in us anymore. That doesn’t mean for one second that we still don’t have purpose. We aren’t the young muscular men we once were, but in a lifetime so far served I have learned much. Probably more than can be found in a set of encyclopedias.
Being proud to be a baby boomer I am proud to be a needed part in taking all I gathered from my past and now reshaping it and using it to help today’s generation to continue to move forward. I end with the barn and myself advancing. It just doesn’t get any better.