The barn....to any member of the Bender family those two words conger up a wealth of memories and the remembered scent of tobacco as it cures. To the average person, there was nothing special about the tobacco barn that stood on our farm in Thruston. To me, my brother and sisters, however, the barn was a magical place filled with mystery and adventure for anyone with a little imagination and a desire to stay out of Mom's sight for awhile.
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Before the age of video games, Disney World and the Internet, a kid's imagination was their only means of escape from the world of mowing the lawn, pulling weeds in the garden, hanging the family laundry on the clothesline and spring housecleaning. The barn set on a little rise not far from our house. Our driveway was about 1/8th mile from the highway and it turned and ran along side the barn and then down the little hill to our home. There were redbud trees, dogwood and yellow forsythia bushes that grew along the barn and they were especially beautiful in the spring when their bright blooms created a stark contrast against the dark weathered wood of the barn.
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The barn always had a distinct smell; a mixture of dried tobacco leaves, oil, gas and dirt. Ahh yes...the dirt...that soft, brown powder-fine dirt. There is nothing like cool barn dirt between your toes on a hot day. Biff and Sam knew the soothing properties of dirt. There was no need to guess where those dogs were on a hot summer afternoon and, more often than not, that's where they were too.
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The front barn doors faced the house and were alway open. On the left was the stripping room, used obviously, for stripping tobacco. It had a wood floor, a pot belly stove and a light that hung from the ceiling. On the right was Dad's shop. For what I now realze as obvious reasons, Dad kept his shop locked. The door had a glass window, but it was frosted which only added to the mystic about what was in there. On rare occasions, Dad would let us in his shop while he was in there, of course. I don't believe the Smithsonian Institute had as much stuff as my Dad had in his shop. We didn't have a clue what most of it was, but it's value was unquestioned because Dad had it locked up in his shop. There was virtually a path that led from the door of the shop to his workbench. I can close my eyes and see my Dad standing at that workbench....like a priest at the altar. Actually the workbench was as sacred as an altar, for to touch anything in Dad's shop was a serious offense, but to touch anything on his workbench was sure and cetain death for a kid. After Dad's death, the shop was the hardest place for me to go. There was so much of him still there. Through my adult eyes, I saw the shop very differently. It was strangely smaller than I remembered. Standing among the clutter, I realized that his shop had been his haven when we kids were too noisy or when he and Mom had a disagreement or when he simply needed to be alone.
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One of my favorite places in the barn was on top of the stripping room. The climb up there wasn't easy, which is probably why it was a favorite place of our cats to have their kittens. I would climb up there and sit among the junk and play with the kittens for hours. Being a tobacco barn, there were tall narrow doors all along the side of the barn that were opened to help cure the tobacco. I would sometimes open the doors and lie in my sancturary above the stripping room with the sun shining in and read the library books that I had gotten from the bookmobile.
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From time to time the barn would be off limits to us kids. Usually this followed an incident where we had gotten into trouble doing something we shouldn't have done. Once George and I used a long rope to throw over one of the tiers in the barn. We tied one end of the rope around Becky's waist and then pulled her about 3 to 4 feet up in the air. George held the rope securely while I used a broom to hit her on the bottom making her swing back and forth. Our only mistake was failing to gag her first for her screams brought Mom running to the barn. In our haste to escape the impending switching ( the forsythia bushes being right near the barn ) we dropped everything ...even the rope...and ran!! Becky wasn't hurt, but to this day she isn't fond of heights.
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Every September the barn would come alive with activity as the tobacco was brought in from the fields and hung to be cured. We kids would watch in total awe as the men would climb to the very top tiers of the barn. Then, with one foot on one tier and the other stretched across to the next tier they would bend down to grab the heavy stick of tobacco being handed up to them from the man below. They were true acrobats and it's little wonder we waited as long as we did to give it a try. If the men could reach across with their feet, it shoud be easy enough to swing across with your hands. This time Theresa was the victim...a broken arm for her efforts. To make matters worse, it was Easter Saturday and Mom was busy getting things ready for our Easter celebration. ....And, once again, the barn was off limits to us kids..
Once the tobacco was hung, it was time for another of our favorite activities..... catching grasshoppers and tobacco worms. The tobacco worms were collected in old coffee cans and judged for size. Grasshoppers, on the other hand, were caught and held until they "spit tobacco juice" and then let go. "Grassphopper, if you spit tobacco juice, I'll turn you loose." I'm not sure why it was so intriguing to see them spew the disgusting brown "juice" from their mouth, but for some unknown reason, we considered it a necessary prelude to their release. Loretta was the only one who didn't participate in the tobacco worm roundups. She hated worms. She hated the color of them...even the sound of the word "worm", she insisted, made her sick at her stomach and unable to eat. Of coarse, we four older siblings took full advantage of this information and it was a nightly contest to see who could manage to insert the word "worm"into the dinner conversation.
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The barn was full of old treasures...at least they were treasures to us. There was a corn sheller, and old (new)commode, a broken hight chair, piles of tobacco sticks, old milk bottles, coffee cans, bikes, tricycles, lawnmowers, chairs, ropes , an old tractor and a variety of old rusty machine parts. With a couple playmates and a little imagination you could go anywhere...to the ranch with Spin and Marty...or down the Ken'tuck River with Daniel Boone..or you could plan a digging expedition to China. You could throw a feed sack on a "saw horse" and imagine you were riding Trigger or grab a tobacco stick and help Zoro fight off bandits. And if you heard 'injuns coming (or Mom), there was a small opening in the side of the barn, just big enough for kids to escape through.
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There was a security light about half way between the house and the barn. It was quite welcome as a child when you had to make a trip outside after dark to feed the dog, but it was a real nuisance when we became teenagers. The light was always on when you came home from a date. If you lingered too long in the car saying goodnight, the light would go off and on. You knew it was only a matter of minutes before Mom or Dad would appear on the porch calling your name and the thought of that humiliation was enough to end any romantic ideas.
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The farm has long since been sold and other children have no doubt, played in the barn. Since moving back to the area almost 18 years ago, I have passed the farm hundreds of times until I almost don't notice it anymore. I felt ashamed of this lack of reverence when I learned today from Theresa that the current owners of the farm had torn the barn down. The words hit me as hard as if she had said they tore down the White House or the Washington Monument. The barn gone !! How long had it been since I had actually looked at it..weeks..months? As I sat grieving the loss tonight, I realized something. The memories I have are not in the barn. They are secure deep in the recesses of my mind and heart and they can never be destroyed. And the memories aren't so much about the barn itself, but about my life growing up and the good times my brother and sisters and I had on our farm. So it really doesn't matter that the barn is gone, I know that I only need to close my eyes and use my imagination to travel back in time and recall our childhood days and all our many adventures in the barn.
The End
Written by Cathy Bender Foster.
This is the actual picture of our home and the barn.
Page by
Rita Bender Wedding
February, 2002
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