For all you country kids with fond memories of playing in the barn, here is one of my most recent poems: That Old, Red, Wooden Barn By Don Welborn A family car pulled into the neighbor’s driveway, the back doors swung open wide The youngsters raced past the two story farmhouse. They wouldn’t be playing inside. They made a beeline for the old, red, wooden barn; a place of great fascination. Where the only limits to adventure and glory, were the limits of one’s own imagination. As you ran for the barn, some parent would yell. “Be careful and don’t cause no trouble!” But you never heard them. They were already tuned out, cause the fun was about to be doubled That old, red, wooden barn was a place of great drama in lives of young rural kids For it offered a stage to live the exploits the cowboys and Indians and pioneers did From behind a fort of hay bales you could surprise the banditos and start a vicious gunfight Or circle back and lay ambush to a wild war party that had chased you long into the night. Or up in the loft, you could jump off a high cliff and into the deep river below And sink up to your waist in the bin of shell corn; get outta the way so the next kid could go You could stand in the spotlight where a pin hole in the boards let a beam of sunshine come through And tell the same old ghost story, you’d told ‘em before; with the ending they already knew With a good running start in dirty sock feet, you could slide on the slick hayloft floor Where thousands of bales had sanded it smooth when dragged from the elevator door With the bales piled high, you could climb to the peak and hang from the hay trolley rail Where you could walk hand over hand, clean to the far end if your strength or nerve didn’t fail You could be Roy Rogers, Lone Ranger or Tonto or that handsome Cartright, Little Joe Or perhaps a bad outlaw, like Jesse or Frank, Billy The Kid or Johnny Ringo Tied high in the rafters, that old hemp hay rope would serve as Tarzan’s grape vine Where you could swing through the breeze and jungle trees and drop loose if you were inclined You could be the conquering hero, play hundreds of games without really causing much harm So many great times were spent in our youth hanging out in that old, red, wooden barn It saddens me now when I see an old barn fall, giving in to the ravages of time They’re expensive to keep up and then there’s the taxes; no wonder they’re all in decline Since I have grown older, I think of the fun, in our own or the barns of my friends And look around me and smile at these old boards, with the faded red paint, that line the walls of my den
Posted on: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 14:07:05 +0000
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