OUR BARN HOME
For most of my childhood, before we moved to town when I was
seven, we lived in a converted barn on a small farm that dad had purchased from
Uncle Henry. It was a tobacco “packing barn” with a pit and attic. It was of
standard one room log construction with mud to chink up the cracks. The lower
floor had been covered on the inside with rough paper nailed to the logs. The
shed on one end had been enclosed and a floor added for use as a kitchen where
an old-fashioned iron cook stove also provided heat in winter. Heating of the
main room was done with a wood heater.
For light we had kerosene lamps, I still have one of these.
Dad and relatives had built an even cruder and smaller barn
for the cow. We also kept a pig and chickens. For water we had a shady spring
at the bottom of the hill. A wooden barrel had been sunk into the ground and
you could feel and see the water bubbling up from the white sand at the bottom.
That was where we kept things that needed to be cool in summertime. Of course
we had an outhouse. Mother washed clothes in a large black wash pot placed over
an outdoor fire.
We lived and slept in the one room. In summer we stayed
outside a lot. In winter we would sit in the dimly lit room waiting for dad to
come home. Mom would comb her hair and sing to us. The sparks would fly from
her hair as she sang about Spanish Knights and Letters to Birmingham Jail.
There was not much color in the old barn. When dad worked
for the sign company he brought home a couple of decorative pictures printed on
sheet metal. They hang in the main room of the barn. I still have one of these.