You Can’t Get a Good Barn Down

By Rosa Lee Richards

The day the farm was sold was a sad day. Developers were moving into our county and the farm was the latest sacrifice. Not all of us were as generous as kind Mr. L., who said, “Well, they’ve got to live somewhere, don’t they?’ about the 400,000 new people in the county.

Old houses were demolished along the narrow lanes. The new four-lane road bypassed the little town with its two failed stores, shuttered-up post-office and condemned school building. When I thought that I had graduated from elementary school there, I felt old and worried.  Were us, the county old-timers, somewhere on the schedule for demolition, too? 

The only clear sign of hope was the dairy barn. The arched barn that had housed 84 Holsteins twice a day at milking time dominated the changing landscape. It was bigger than any McMansion in the development and flaunted its rusty roof at change. Yet we all knew its time would come and down it would go, like everything else around.

But we were wrong. Time passed and so did millions of the developer’s dollars. The barn was reroofed, newly floored, glass put into the ends that framed the remaining rural scenery. Rooms for the bride with her bridesmaids to dress in and another for the groom with his ushers to relax in were finished, the huge meeting room with its glorious double barrel-hoop chandeliers was opened for conferences, balls, weddings and church services. Pictures of the dairymen and the dairy operation were dotted around the building. Thanks to the kindness of the developer, the barn and memories of a gentler, harder-working time were being rightly  honored. Thank you, from some of us old timers. 

Revelation 21: 4-5 “There shall be no more sorrow. . . Then He who sat on the throne  said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.