The sky above the barn. A modern sky, due to the jet contrails.
The place where the barn is most deteriorated after approximately 100 years.
The place where the barn is least deteriorated--the tin roof and rafters.
Looking westward in the hayloft with its now-warped floor.
Eastward view. It was about 4:45 pm when I took all these photos.
Dried up cow dung mixed with dirt on the ground floor.
East side of barn, ground level.
West side of the barn at loft level.
I didn't realize it until I began writing this that I took these photos on my grandfather's birthday, February 7. (He was born in 1898 and died in 1973.) This barn and a bigger one (now gone) and the milking barn (a one-story rectangular brick building) were built for my grandfather's dairy farm. He was Walter Trulock Jr., and his father, Walter Sr., owned the farm, which was strictly a cotton farm until my grandfather started the dairy business. My dad, Walter III, was born in 1921 and grew up on the farm. Later--34 years later--he moved back to the farm from Washington DC, bringing me, my older brother, and our mother back with him. So I grew up, until I was nine-and-a-half, on the farm also, and played in this barn as a kid. We lived in the remodeled milking barn from 1955 until 1964. It's still in use as a home, and is in good shape, but is owned by another family. The farm itself, with a little less acreage, is still owned by my family (three of my brothers and me). No cotton is grown on it currently, just soybeans, rice, and corn, and occasionally winter wheat.
The front of the remodeled dairy barn house on a foggy-ish day in June 2009. The barn and its surrounding field are out of view behind the house, but the edge of the bigger barn, torn down in 2010 or 2011 at the request of Floreen Chadick, who lived in the house at the time and whose descendants still own it but don't live in it, is visible on the left.
During the time my family lived in this house, my father occasionally would say I was "the strong, silent type," when I was introduced to people and didn't have much to say. He didn't know that I occasionally went out to this bigger barn and threw clumps of hay down to the ground from the hayloft to attract the cows. While they were munching on hay below me and as I was throwing more down to them, I shouted to them, and as I recall it was a bit of lightweight verbal abuse about them being dumb and not paying attention when I was talking. "Hey you! Yeah, you! Wbat are you lookin' at?" Etc, etc.
