As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter.
When the wind blew the shingles off the barn and the house when I was a youngster, the old man got 600 bucks for it. Back then you could shingle a barn and a house for 1000 bucks. The old man though getting 600 bucks spent it like that jackass always did.
His being a jackass saw a barn costing 10,000 to tin and as me and the mother did not have that kind of funds, the barn degraded in all the hopes and dreams of people in the 1930's and it finally started collapsing in the horrific HAARP wind storms where it came to rest on a gate I needed to open, which begins this saga.
I saw a Dewalt 36 inch wrecking bar for like 17 bucks so I got that thinking I would do some nail pulling in the summer. No such fortune as without donations and being hindered and Two Chiefs, it turned into November before I could even begin this horrendous task as barns are heavy.
The first step was to get the barn off the gate. Fortunately for me, Holy Angels helped, I tore off some roof and used the pry bar to get the chain unhooked and the gate swung open, and I used a come along on a tree to straighten the wood post past center to the gate now swings open.
Of course we had other chit going on. Our pick up needed extra attention in the shop, got that done, and then the grommet on the gas tank disintegrated and gas was leaking all over. Old pick up, it too 5 days over the weekend to get that one piece in.
I was moved to not sit my ass in town waiting, so we came home on a sunny, cold HAARP wind 40 degree day, and I ripped some siding off the barn, hoped I would not get crushed if it gave way and finally hooked some log chains up to the Super M, as no donations meant no big tractor or payloader to get things done. I just prayed that I would not rip the tractor apart as this was a barn I was hooked on to.
It was .....interesting as I hooked the chain up onto a main beam, and put the Super in first gear and to my surprise it started to come, the barn I mean. I thought, "Wow this is not what I expected", so I released the clutch and went for it all, in hoping I would not have more problems as I figured the front would fall, then I would have to try and hammer siding off the barn beams from the back side.
It was.......interesting as the barn just kind of exploded. I did not know that God had barn exploding Holy Angels, but everything just kind of exploded as the big hay door came off, the siding came off the beams and there it laid.
I still had this top overhang, so I hustled to hook onto the bale lift trolley, and pulled on that, and that had 1 by 12 boards flying like toothpicks, and it was all laying in a pile before the gate.
Day 2 saw me pulling the nails out of the U harnesses holding the trolley on to the main 4 by 6 beam. Unless you have seen this work, it is hard to explain, and the only reason I know what this is, is that I helped a neighbor load square bales into the loft of their barn. The basis of this is, is that a very thick rope is hooked to a grapple or hay sling as we had the old hay slings from a sale in I pay attention to things like that.
The rope is hooked to tractors or horses, the pulley drops that the grapple is attached to. You grab the bales by a pincer and then drive the horses or tractor ahead to raise the hay. When it hits the top, it trips to ride back into the barn where you pull on a rope and the hay trips in release. The harder you hit the release rope the further the hay goes into the barn. Is fantastic mechanism. My old man being a genius with shit for brains had none of this so it was all throwing bales in by hand
So I was taking that metal trolley apart as I want to save it just in case and I need to get the pulleys down too, after I get the rest of the barn down.
I was very pleased with God, Holy Angels and Super MTA Farmalls. For all the quirks and fixing on that Farmall, I'm beginning to love it like a lazy dog that you find out later has a penchant for killing and eating Mexicans who are a threat to you.
Farmall still needs some hoses and I got to take the left brake apart as it is now on all the time, not the right brake I took apart before. I have no idea what his millionaire dumb fuck did to this tractor but he had it all fucked up and I'm fixing on it yet.
So that is where this stands. The pry bar was a Godsend. I can not recommend this any better for prying on things. Yes I had a monkey bar and I had to use that to get 70 year old nails out of the wood to start the pulling process, but this big bar saved me lots of pain and effort. Had enough effort for 2 days as my back is twinging in telling me to stop an take ibuprofen which I have done.
I just need to get the big door moved and then the splintered pieces along with some roof and this major project will be done as much as I need for now.
I am sad though in while I pull nails and take out bolts, I think of those people long dead, in all of their hopes and dreams. This barn was actually the product of an older barn. For all I know it was that barn from the original homestead barn. That barn sat north of our shack across a slough run as our driveway used to go north in 1880 apparently as plum brush is on that corner of the trees. There are flat rocks there where the horses and cows were once in a barn sheltered. The second barn was by the one I'm pulling down and did not look much bigger, but it was big enough that the wood was salvaged and put onto the back of this barn. That is very old and dry rotted wood. I'm certain that when the people who built this barn after a few years of prosperity thought they were finally going to have something. It saddens me as I have the deed to this farm site. In the brier, you got 2 good years, 5 marginal years and 3 years of drought. You could see money borrowed on this place like clockwork as it changed hands. Some Catholic Jesuits did pretty good on this place, but I knew the family and they moved to town and are about all kaput now. The old gal survived for about a decade before this place changed hands again.
The land here grew allot of rocks and grew allot of quack grass that choked out crops, until heavy machinery came along and atrazine.
It is all about gone now, no record of the dreams. If my old man was not such a worthless horses ass, I think he could have made it, but he was a little boy who wanted to do rodeo as a dream and the mother told him NO YOU HAVE A FAMILY, so he drank allot, was an asshole to us, and pouted as he spent money like a crack whore and bitched at us to tighten our belts.
If I ever have the funds I would build a 3 sided U shaped pole shed when things get cleaned up. Be a good shelter for animals and for equipment. That spot though is about the worst place to have a building as the wind blows like hell up there even with all the trees I have let grow up around here. You may not know it, but wind rolls. It comes over trees or hills and it rolls to the ground. Where the barn is, is one spot on this place that the wind hits no matter the direction. Is ok if you are balls hot in August milking cows that are about dying, for a breath of air, but it is damned killer cold in the winter.
These old hay barns where the genius of Americans in the wilds. They housed all the hay. Housed your your horses on one side, milk cows on the other and in a lean to, you had your hogs for quick money and a butcher pig in the fall. Most of them are gone now as no one could afford the upkeep and ours is going be a memory soon enough as I'm one of the last people who know what these red barns were all about as no one now cares.
I remember bottle calves in the lean as the old man would get them cheap from feedlots in calves that popped out of heifers that should not have been bred, hogs that almost killed my brother, animals dying because the old man fucked up, working my ass off pitching hay to calves every day, and Libby in the panels, hitting them and bending them, and letting me touch her nostril for the first time as she was one wild horse. She though is dead, collic. Will not see her until Heaven and is one more dead dream on a long list that people on this place all suffered from. Not allot of good memories in that barn, more tragedy than not, but it was my barn and now it has gone the way of the ages, like most of America will be from this point on.
Nuff Said
agtG
