The Barn
By Douglas Robert Boardman , Jr . davidbrewsterfineart . com
DAVID BREWSTER mitchellgiddingsfinearts . com / artist / david-brewster
Shortly after his 78h birthday , my great-uncle George was standing on his toes at the very end of a ladder , replacing the trim halfway up the side of his barn . He ’ d been working out there all day in some rare 90-degree heat , probably without a drop of water , when he must have passed out , fallen off the ladder , rolled about twenty feet down a hill into the tall grass and laid there dazed for twenty minutes or so . When he came to , he walked back up the hill , climbed the ladder again and finished the job . Since I lived a couple miles down the road from the farm , I often stopped in to visit on my way home from work , and this time in particular , I noticed that his bushy gray beard and long hair were more disheveled than usual , and he was especially cranky , and after George mentioned something about not being able to sleep and related the afore-mentioned details , I finally convinced him to visit a doctor--so we headed off to Burlington and the emergency room . It turned out George had two cracked ribs and a mild concussion . On the way home we argued about the cause of the accident .
“ You probably had heat stroke , George . Next time , you need to drink more water and sit in the shade ,” I said .
“ That had nothing to do with it ,” George said . “ It was that goddam barn . If it would just stay put , I wouldn ’ t have to keep fixing it . And there must be
something wrong with the ladder too . Why do they put that warning on there to stay off the top rung ? What good is it if you can ’ t stand on it ?”
George Bliss was a farmer , plain and simple — like his father and grandfather , and great-grandfather Augustus Bliss . Sometime around 1866 , a year after he returned from the War Between the States , Augustus finished the barn he had started before leaving . It ’ s a testament to the tenacious Yankee perseverance of Augustus that he managed to complete the project with only his right arm , having lost the left to a minie ball at Cedar Creek .
More than 70 years later , George was an only child and had just turned 18 when he went off to fight a different war in the South Pacific . When the fighting was done , he folded up his uniform and put it in a box at the bottom of his closet . George never married and lived in the old house until his parents passed on and he was left alone to do the only thing he ever knew how to do .
He milked 80-100 head of cows , sold the occasional yearling heifer , and mowed about 150 acres , selling whatever sileage he didn ’ t feed to his own livestock . Meanwhile , the tie-stall barn that Augustus built had become a patchwork quilt of tin , tarpaper , and two-by-eights . The lime whitewash inside was a faded gray and dry rot had set in several of the main support beams . As a result , it groaned and swayed on windy days , complaining of old age and overwork .
In fact , over the years the barn had taken on an almost malevolent air and George felt like he had spent half his life skirmishing with it . More than once , he ’ d torn his trousers on a nail , banged his head on a beam , or tripped over a loose floorboard . It had started to sag at one end where it leaked in the summer while the corners filled up with snow in the winter . The cows , who preferred to stay neutral , never complained as long as they got fed and milked according to schedule . As for George , he looked on the barn with suspicion and it came to represent all that was wrong about farming and life in general .
A few years after the ladder incident , the old-timer was creeping into his 80 ’ s and had to sell the cows and lease out his fields . By then , the barn and George were both on their last legs anyway . A builder from Stowe came by and offered him a dollar a board , said he had some clients that wanted that “ authentic ” look for the inside of their house , but George said he wouldn ’ t wish that barn on anyone and anyway , he needed a place to keep his old farm equipment .
He was using a walker at that point , lifting and scooting it forward , then shuffling ahead in his black rubber galoshes . One evening in late March , after a foot of snow fell in one weekend ,
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