April 19, 2026

By Arthur H. Gunther III

thecolumnrule.com

In much of the United States you will find barns, often long unused, probably leaning as the old do, just off the now-busy highway called Progress. In the wisp of the country morning though, or at least the memory of it, horses are in the stable slots, hay is in the loft, and the rooster has already sounded its alarm clock.

How pleasant it is to see such a sight in mind’s eye, for even if the old post-and-beam place with red-painted boards no longer is metaphorically tethered to land, its human builders to the plow, we are in assurance that our nation could not have grown without such humble temples.

Stop along the country road somewhere and listen in the barn’s shadow. Do you hear the youngsters dropping hay on their siblings and friends? Do you smell the particular scent of aging wood in the rising heat of day? Do you see the farmer pulling out the harvester? Do you touch the stones, dug from the fields and used on the bank side of the barn?

Before you get back in the car and drive to the busy, even fast-paced routine of the day, take a picture of this monument to human growth and survival, not with smart phone but with your eyes. Blink once to record what was and what gave life. A barn may retire, but the rhythm it once began on each early morn can still be played as you pull out the image you stored in your mind’s cloud.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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