Sports - Outdoors: Drive By Treasures

I think barns are far more than that.

If you drive along any road besides the interstate highways, you will pass barns of every shape, size and color you can imagine. To me, these sentinels of our byways reflect our history. First of all, a barn must be at least a thousand years old to qualify and must have never been painted more than once and that was on its first day of entry into the world and finally, it has to lean in at least one direction or another, any direction will do except straight up.

A barn can be red or green or black or, best of all, just plain old weathered wood so old that its original paint job just fell off. It can have a flat roof or a roof with a single center ridge or a shed roof or the very traditional bell shaped roof.

If you take the time to really look at a barn, you can usually tell what it was originally built for.

The bell-shaped two-story barns were built to store hay on the top level and house animals on the lower level. Many of the one story barns were built to protect farm equipment particularly those that have a door on each end, sort of a drive-through barn. The farmer would drive his horse team in on one end, unhook whatever piece of equipment he was using and continue out the other end. It was much easier and faster since most horses don’t come with a reverse gear built in.

If you really want to look for the “real” barns, try to find one built without nails or screws or bolts. If you can still find one of these, you have found a gem. Look to the hand-hewn timbers and wooden pegs used to hold them in place. I remember when I was a kid almost all of the farms where I grew up had at least one barn built this way. Many of these dated back well over a hundred years, back to the days when farms were handed down from father to son to son to son.

Unfortunately, most of these grand old structures are gone along with the horses they protected and the hay they stored. Many were just left to rot. Others were dismantled for the wood when back in the 1960’s it became fashionable to use the old wood to build a new house. Still others, and many of those I knew as a boy, where burned to simply get them out of the way for new barns built for more modern equipment. I remember one particular barn that we burned were the timbers were so big it took four days before the fire went out. What a piece of history went up in smoke that day.

I would venture to say that in today’s world, most barns are invisible. Oh! they’re out there, but we drive right by without seeing them or certainly without appreciating them. I, as a history nut, have a hard time understanding this because I see them as storytellers of our past. If only I could figure out a way of tapping into their souls and get them to share with me all that they have witnessed.

There is one way and that’s with a camera. Next time you are out for a recreational drive, be sure to take your camera with photographing barns as your objective. You won’t have to go far, just get off the interstate on just about any country road and you will have all the subject matter you’ll need. When you see a barn, pull over and take a picture from the angle you first see it.

But, then don’t drive away looking for the next barn. Just let your car creep down the road a couple of hundred feet and take another look. What you will find is a totally new picture.

Same barn! New picture! And if you can get out of your vehicle and walk all the way around the building, you will find that it has numerous secrets to reveal each one worthy of it’s own frame on your wall and before you know it, hours have slipped by, your camera is full and your image of history has expanded and is much richer.

And if I’m wrong……you at least had a day out enjoying the fantastic area we live in.

See you outdoors!

You can reach Dick at rtotino@nycap.rr.com.