Barns

Today's Wonder of the World is...barns!
Here's the one across the street from Sam's elementary school.

Doesn't it look peaceful?
I would walk in that barn and take pictures for you, but there's a fence. Plus there are classes of schoolchildren on the playground who might see me climbing over it and tease Sam about having a crazy person for a mommy.

If you live on a farm, you may think I'm one of those city girls with dreamy ideas of farms and barns and how lovely it would be to have to step over cow manure all the time.

You're right!

Here is the barn I first fell in love with.

Sorry. I guess you can't tell much about the barn here, but it's the only picture I could find of it.
I might as well have taken a photo of my family in front of a black sheet.
But at least you can see everyone back in 1994.
All my mom's and daddy's relatives live in eastern Kentucky, and this picture was taken in front of Granddaddy's barn. That's my Granddaddy Skaggs, my mom, Sarah, Ben and me, Todd, my sister-in-law Leah, my brother Steve, my Granny Skaggs and my dad. (Butch is asking Granddaddy when all these people will go home and he can have Granddaddy back to himself. Rocky is sniffing Butch's hindquarters and wondering if we're all going to start living here.)

As a kid, I was fascinated with that barn. I was seriously envious that my aunt Trisha, who was just two years older than me, got to play in it whenever she wanted. Whenever we'd come to visit and weren't playing jokes on my little brother (Sorry Steve but it was funny,) we'd climb on hay bales, play with the barn cats, and just poke around. Trisha would put up with me and my Little Miss Farm Girl fantasies until she'd get bored out of her mind. Then she'd force me back in the house for another round of Pink Panther or Clue.

Now Trisha's a grown- up with a barn of her own. Here it is.

See the quilt square they're putting up?
Trisha's barn is part of the Kentucky Quilt Trail, in which barns all over eastern Kentucky are decorated with painted quilt squares. The articles online say that it is for promoting cultural pride and tourism in the rural counties, but I love it just because it's pretty! Trisha's particular square is an exact copy of a quilt pattern her mom, my Granny (seen above,) made years before.

My Aunt Janet's barn has one too. I love it. It's designed just like a pillow Granny made for Janet. Sometime I will have to tell you stories about Aunt Janet too, like the time she spanked me for telling my brother to go run in the road. (I love you Steve.) I'm over that now and love her very much.

That's my Uncle Tilden's head and shoulders. He's a sweetie.
So are Trisha and Janet, of course. So are all my relatives! (See, nobody get mad at me, okay? Y'all are all sweeties. You really are.)

I never have been to a barn raising, but I hope they're like this...
(Here's a dance scene from Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, one of the strangest musicals I've ever seen. I'm still puzzled by it, and not just because Cat Woman played Dorcas. Still, you've got to love the dancing.)