Another story from my old website that hasn't been posted here yet.
(originally posted 2 July 2002)
I was driving around on probably the last warm day of summer, out in the country where I used to live. It was bringing back lots of memories from when I was younger, before I moved away and started working and all. I stopped at a couple of places, just to see if they were different from way back when, and of course they were. There was one more place I wanted to see, so I drove past where my parents used to live to the old abandoned barn.
The barn sat in the middle of a property that used to be a working farm, with a house and other outbuildings. But now the house was gone, the fields were overgrown with weeds and wildflowers, and the only outbuilding left was the barn. Even it was considerably more run-down than I remembered it, with a few holes in the wooden walls and some missing shingles on the roof. It was tall, and I remembered that it had a good-sized loft in the west end.
I pulled onto the property and drove far enough in to where some overgrown shrubs hid my truck from passing cars. The gas station across the road was even abandoned now, which made the area look even more desolate than before. I got out and walked slowly up to the barn, taking my time and surveying the surrounding field as I walked.
The big rolling door was wide open, just like it always was. I walked in, and felt as if I'd stepped back fifteen years. There was old clumps of straw on the floor, a bucket rusting in the corner, some other unidentified stuff scattered around. I saw the loft, with the rungs up one wall leading up to it. I climbed up partway, and it was much the same as before, not much there. The roof was riddled with strips of bright light. If it hadn't been dry around here lately, there would probably be puddles or damp spots on the floor.
There were two small rooms in the middle of the barn, under the front of the loft, and then an opening to a big room in the back. I walked toward the back room. The concrete floor became dirt back there, and a small window cast very little light into the space. The ceiling was partly gone ’ the main reason why I'd never ventured into the loft ’ and you could see through past the big log beams to the roof. It was very quiet. It brought back memories, arousing ones.
I walked back toward the front and into the little rooms. The first room led you to a doorway to the second room. Both were small, with concrete block walls and concrete floors, and the ceiling was in better shape than in the big dark room but still constructed of the log beams and floorboards on top of them. I got to the second room, which had a window with no glass, and remembered everything.
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