Rainy Days of the Farm

We had an old barn that sat low to the ground. You could get a load of hay in the hall but as barns go, it was small. It never saw a speck of paint. The roof was rusty and the boards weathered. A mule could get in if he bent his ears back. Now on the farm, the weather was everything. We needed sunny days and we needed rainy days. There wasn't much we could do about either except go to church and pray. We did some of that too. Mostly, we worked on sunny days and did inside stuff on the rainy days. What was there to do inside? Well, one thing you could scrap the mud off your shoes from going to slop the hogs or that other stuff from going to the pasture or barn. You could work on school work. Maybe, if the lightning wasn't too bad you could watch Dark Shadows or the Edge of Night.

Anyway, what I was going to get at was the barn and that tin roof. We had those pop-up showers (nowadays their pop-up stuff on your computer screen). I wouldn't have known about computers if there had been such a thing, I thought McDonald's was a farm until many years later when I found out they sold hamburgers. Oh yeah, the barn.... When I would see one of those showers coming, I'd take off to the barn. In our large family there was not much privacy, but if I could get to the barn just as it started to rain, no one else would venture out in the storm. We had a place in the loft where such things as cotton seed for the cattle was stored. Along with the hay and other feeds, it gave off a not unpleasant smell and made a good place to sit where critters were unlikely to climb so high. Up there I could listen to the rain and look out as it soaked the dry dirt. The air would get cool and it felt so good to be alone for a few minutes. Soon the storm was over and it was back to cutting wood or taking off my shoes and getting something out of the garden where I would sink into the mud almost to my knees sometimes. I'll never forget that old barn loft. While there alone in the peacefulness, I probably thought some profound thought but I can't remember it now.