Theme Thursday: Barns

Jan. 31, Feast of St. John Bosco, Apostle of Youth, founder of the Salesian Society.

ISO 200  //  f/1.8  //  Dusk effect applied in PicMonkey

Though there are plenty of barns within a 5 mile radius of my country town apartment, none of them are as suited to this Thursday's theme as this one.  This barn is the one at the old home place, a.k.a. Aunt Eda's house.  I knew it a long while back, before it was dilapidated, and when the cows and crops still populated the fields adjacent, as Aunt Eda's home, my great great aunt's house.  We visited her there.  She always had Pringles to eat, and cranberry juice.  It smelled funny, but I remember, even then, liking to be out near the barn, or on the fence looking at the cows.

Nobody lives there now, and the barn is stuffed with forgotten treasures; one of which is a simple, wooden coffin resting on the beams above.  You can still see it.  It gave me thrills when I was a little girl, but it wasn't until I was older, about fourteen or so, that I learned its story.

The coffin, so my uncle said, was bought by Papa Ike, my great grandfather's father.  I guess people back then took preemptive measures, or maybe he was expecting trouble.  I've heard other stories about Papa Ike's drinking parties, how he was bootlegger, and that he rode his horse right up the stairs of the front porch,  through the house, and back out the back porch and down the stairs again.  Who knows?  At any rate, Papa Ike was a drunk and everyone knew it.  So when he had made arrangements for the coffin to be shipped back home out of town on the back of a wagon, he got to drinking.  One thing led to another, and he saw the finished coffin sitting on the back of the wagon, ready to to be delivered.  Well, he must have thought it looked mighty cozy, cause he climbed right inside and fell asleep.  Needless to say, he gave the townsfolk quite a fright when the wagon started to and jostled him awake--he sat bolt upright in the coffin as it was driven out of town, and they all thought a dead man had sat up and looked around!

And that, dear readers, is a true-as-true story.

For more barns and barn tales, see Cari.