I'll bet they had a party

You can hardly see it from the road. The old barn. Or rather what’s left of the old barn. A crumbling skeleton fading away in some forgotten field of someone’s long ago dreams. A year or two from now I’ll walk down this road again and it’ll be gone. I’ll bet they had a party when they raised her though. A lifetime or two or three ago it was some farmer’s pride and joy. Built by the hands of family, friends and neighbors. It was shelter from the storms of summer and the snows of winter. It was storage for the harvest. It knew the sound of a fiddle and the laughter of Saturday night barn dances. And it was probably a big, old playhouse for more than a few generations of children. I wonder how many guilty young boys waited in it for a dreaded appointment with Father’s hickory switch? I wonder how many young lovers secretly met behind it for a moonlight smooch? I wonder how many stories it could tell? Well, only a few beams and part of a sunken roof remain today. And it won’t be long before the old barn’s not even a memory. I’ll bet they had a party when they raised her though.