TRESPASS

  …sneaking about a roadside attraction…

There’s an old barn tucked around the bend of a rugged two-lane road, just on the other side of a rise. It’s probably been there forever: plank sides aged to near black; shingled roof haphazardly covered long ago with corrugated metal. From astride the seat of the BMW, I see double doors agape, hinges frozen, perhaps. I could peek inside were I to choose to stop.

 

 

I choose to stop. Peering in, thin slivers of light pierce through flicker pecked holes in the tinder dry wooden sides and from the roof where the tin has shifted. As my eyes adjust, stalls come into view; stalls with remnants of forgotten tack hanging from nails, I suppose. And a loop or two of rope. The center of the space is swept clean and vacant save for a pair of wooden barrels, a couple of tall fruit picking ladders ~ three legged things fashioned so they could stand on uneven ground ~ and deep in the shadows a… what’s that? 

     A 40s era Ford Ferguson tractor ~ an 8N I’m thinking ~ more rust than color. Dad taught me how to drive on one when I was about eight. I remember the cold, bare metal seat he’d covered with a shearling jacket scrap, the ratchety hand throttle to the right of a Bakelite coated steering wheel, the shift knob that, in concert with the tractor’s engine, buzzed and vibrated like crazy and the lever I’d yank on to lift any disk plough or a spring tooth harrow or a land plane I might be pulling when I needed to turn around. Maybe there’s a disk out back, I think.

     I close my eyes for a moment and inhale deeply. The place smells of dust and sweet ag filth, but mostly of yesteryears. I have to wonder if there’s a nasty old ratter cat hiding in the darkness somewhere, ready to scream a defiant scream and launch itself onto my face to claw out my eyes should I venture in.

     

So I don’t, nor do I go out back looking for ploughs and stuff. It just wouldn’t be right. The fenceline that had marked the rancher’s property line long ago fell and decayed into the weeds and thistles, but I know shouldn’t be trespassing. Tiptoeing away, I glance this way and that, hoping the ass end of my motorcycle riding togs won’t be on the receiving end of some old boy’s birdshot pellets. 

     Riding off, I think about how I might feel if curious passers-by were to pause and peek inside my family’s barn from sixty or seventy years back. Hell, it was old when we moved in in ‘57. 

     I wonder if the thing is still standing.

 

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