Blow Your House Down

I often wonder why many of us get satisfaction when we see an old barn ready to collapse. The dilapitated structure without colour, missing windows and doors. Photographers love to hunt down the washed out, windowless firewood because it tells a story. In any good movie with children you have an old house, barn or shed that holds secrets or at least we choose to believe they do.

The fear factor is also linked to these buildings. What's inside? Is it haunted? What if a body is rolled up in a dusty carpet or money was stashed from a past bank robbery. We want to believe in that 'lottery combination', the winning tale that's waiting to be told. As children we're often too frightened to do it alone so, we create a web of lies to dare our fellow friends to 'do it'..go in and uncover the secrets of Old Mr. Chamber's barn.

Yes, there are stories in those barns, houses and sheds. Years of memories belong to someone who is now in a nursing home or has left us. If you squeeze your eyes hard enough you can see a struggling farmer milking his cows or a woman with her apron held out to gather the fresh farm eggs. Were they happy? Did they like the smell of the hay and sounds of the large red hens cackling away? She pushes her hand under the warm feathers to retrieve a brown egg while he strokes the flank of the jersey cow and talks to her like an old girlfriend.

Then, it's back to the house, the house made of wood and bricks. There's a charm to this house. Freshly painted with ivy crawling up the posts and a screen door waving back and forth with the light breeze. It's the home we all wanted to be raised in, the home we saw on the Waltons. Yes, it was a happy place full of love and the smell of baked bread with a large dog twitching in the hall as he chases the farm cat one more time. But, where are they now?

All that's left of the pioneering days are loose shingles and rotting planks. We sometimes sigh because we were not born during these times. We may shed a tear because we know there are people in our past who did sit by a radio and listen to a news story or a young couple who were simply happy to have time to put their feet up and read the daily news.

A wooden pole still leans by the entrance where the mail was delivered and a box off its hinges is covered in dead leaves. Back in the time the milk bottles were put into that small box. Fences lean in all directions having weathered snow, dry spells and heavy winds. And there may even be an old dog house abandoned to make room for field mice and feral cats

. After a day of wondering about 'the histroy behind the home', 'the lifestyles of those before us', I go back to my home which is supposed to be my joy but I crave that old barn, I crave the wooden balcony and shutters, the screen door and the personalble milkman or mailman coming by for a yarn.

Why is that we want to 'live' a life we have never lived? Maybe they had it right back then. Perhaps we have lost our moral compass and with it, we have lost the old barn, the old house with the attic and the shed now laced in cobwebs. I wish I had experienced a life where our days were simple yet we had to earn each moment. It's fading away.

Still, we can take the mental journey with a friend or two and 'wonder' what it was like when the barn stood tall and the postbox was shiny, the rooster crowed and the scent of a baked pie found it's way from the new farm house. Yes, we can squeeze our eyes shut and wonder.