Red Barn with Horse

A good looking horse in a red barn and a well stocked red silo to the right.  Just across the brown picket fence, a spotted cow.  Careful now.  That’s my artwork from several decades ago.    And it’s not a bad dream for a city kid who seldom saw a barn and never rode a horse.

It can take years to fulfill a dream.  Or maybe the dream skips a generation.  I never did really get into horseback riding and I never owned a horse.  But a decade ago we moved to the country, built a red shed and bought a horse to go in it.  For our daughter who has now moved on and has a herd of horses, and rides all of them, and feeds them from a big, but not red, barn.

I still have the red shed and the neighbor’s cows next door.  And a brown picket fence around the garden plot.

And fine memories.

The Barn

Old Man Wilson built this barn.  By himself.  Cut every board, pounded every nail, by himself.  Had to.  There weren’t any neighbors within a day’s walk and the wife couldn’t help.  She had more than her share of work, what with their third child due any day and the two they already had, not yet  4 years old. None of them could help him.  So Old Man Wilson did it himself.  Got the barn up and  just in time.  Winter came early that year and with a vengeance .  But the barn was up and his horses were safe.

Old Man Wilson worked those horses, and himself, hard.  And the land.  Expected a lot out of all of them.  Those 3 kids, too.  They grew up strong. They understood the value of hard work.  But they weren’t too keen on it and each of ’em moved on as soon as they could.  Old Man Wilson got tired, too.  Sold the place to a city slicker who knew nothin’ of working the land, just liked the looks of that old barn.  So the barn sat and the city slicker looked at it. The land began to reclaim its own. The land planted a tree  in front of the barn door effectively making the barn of no use, should anyone have had a hankerin’ to actually use it. But no one did.

 The tree and the barn just looked  nice. They looked real nice.