Unwitting History Students :: August 19th, 2002 ::
After the first surprise guests came and left (friends of Jessamyn’s), the second pulled in the driveway.
Who are these people?
Turns out he grew up here, a nephew (or maybe it was a cousin?) to the people who actually owned this barn (and about 100 arces of farmland). We walked through the barn and he traced with his hands the phantom of form that used to exist, but no longer did (here’s where the second level of the hayloft was, and right here is where the cows would stay for the night; just like this). He walked through the second level of the barn, transfixed by his memory of how the place was sixty years ago. We watched pensively as he moved closer to the hole in the floor, covered by a piece of plywood.
“You shouldn’t stand there,” we told him.
I sometimes wonder about this place, about its history and about the people who populated and cared for it over the past century, as it passed through the generations before being carved up and sold off. Since moving here, I’ve had my suspicions that the creaking rafters and the aged lean acquired by the structure were indicators of a much deeper, more comeplling story. As we watched him go through not only the building, but his own memories of his childhood, I was glad to see my suppositions were justified.
