It stands witness to the traffic and affairs of everyday life. It is older than I. Yes, I believe older than us all.
Its exterior is clad with diagonal shingles, calling to mind the scales of a fearsome dragon, but the vision is deceptive. As I, it is showing its age.
Its interior beams, weathered and checked, can be seen clearly in the daylight that enters it through missing east and west doors and windows. Its cupola sits crookedly astride its unevenly sagging ridge pole. It bears the scars of appendages removed, for usefulness or necessity. Its neighbor is a faithful companion, a massive Chinese chestnut that shades it from southern sun in summer while letting the fleeting winter sun warm its old timbers.
The barn has begun to list in recent years, now leaning decidedly northward. Its eastern side has buckled outward, an interior post or two having given way. Without repair the decay will continue until the barn succumbs to the forces surrounding it: wind and water, snow and ice and rain, or simply gravity.
What a structure it must’ve been in its early years! Not as large as some of the town’s other barn owners could boast, but a beacon signaling the change from Hampton to our southern neighbors to travelers utilizing the nearby road.
Each time I approach the barn, I feel my breath halt rounding the corner as I wonder to myself, is it still standing? These old structures don’t die easily, mortised and tenoned together. My father spoke of his friend, Joe White, owner of a Dutch gambrel home nestled in the woods of town. Joe had an old barn, likely contemporary to his home, that he wanted removed. My father with reluctance helped him in the task: “What a shame! We had to hook a chain around the corner post and use a tractor to break it to get the barn down.” Yes, my father understood the beauty of ancient and lasting craftsmanship, and that each demolition diminished our own history, a beam and a trunnel at a time.
The National Weather Service has advised us that tomorrow will bring perhaps our first snowstorm of the season. Yes, I enjoy snow. While I could go out and play, I prefer to truly enjoy it from inside my snug home as it dances down, changing my view of my world.
I am expectant that I will survive this storm, as I have so many others.
I don’t know about the barn. Perhaps it, too, will survive to greet me once more, a welcome friend, as I drive by.
June Pawlikowski Miller
This was the first barn we featured in the series “Our Rural Heritage”, originally intended to record the stories of our town’s old barns “while they’re still standing”. That was seven years ago. These words and the photograph were recorded this winter. Spring has finally sprung; we’ve survived another winter and so has the barn.