[AT] Old work boots ramble

[George Willer]

Dean,

You've described a barn from my past that I really miss.  My current one I 
built when we re-located is much larger, but can't compare for style.  A 
major difference is that the earlier one was visible from the family room, 
while the sheet metal box is not visible from the house at all.  BTW... the 
M is one tractor that has to remain outside because the barn is full.

http://members.toast.net/gwill/album/Misc/barn.jpg

Well done!  Please keep sharing your dreams.

George Willer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dean Vinson" <vinsond at voyager.net>
To: <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2004 6:22 PM
Subject: [AT] Old work boots ramble


> Spent several hours trimming trees and cleaning out gutters today, the 
> kind of chore for which I dig out my old leather boots.  Over the course 
> of many trips back and forth across the yard, dragging tree branches to a 
> big pile that will supply indoor kindling and outdoor bonfires over the 
> next few months, I noticed that much of the yard is pretty rough looking. 
> Bare spots, dips from where I'd burned out some stumps but never really 
> filled it back in right, weedy places.  "Maybe I could buy something small 
> like a Super C, and find a rear-mounted tiller for it," I thought to 
> myself.
>
> The northwest corner of the yard is where the barn would go, the one where 
> I'd keep the Super M (and I guess the Super C, too, as long as I'm 
> daydreaming).  Probably keep the bikes and lawnmower and extension ladder 
> and such in there also, I suppose, but mostly it'd be a barn. I'd have to 
> build it myself to keep the cost down and because I'd need it to be an 
> honest barn rather than one of those pretend things I see out in front of 
> the Home Depot.  Have to have a pretty high door to clear the muffler on 
> the Super M, and of course some good workspace, so it'd end up being 
> pretty big.  I'd have to add some barn details, maybe a haymow door up 
> high.  I'd wear my old leather boots while I built it.
>
> Right now the woodpile is on that spot.  Not this summer but each of the 
> two before, we had a crew thin out the trees in the back yard and cut down 
> some dead ones from the front, maybe 20 total, decent-sized, 6" to 12" in 
> diameter I guess.  The crew ground the tops into mulch and cut the wood 
> into fireplace length for us, and by now I've got all but a little bit of 
> it split.  That's a job for the leather boots, and while I split I 
> remember splitting with my dad and loading wood into the old two-wheel 
> wagon, hooked to Dad's '48 Case.  We just had the one wagon, so it hauled 
> everything.  Kids, manure, firewood, fertilizer, seed, hoes and rakes. 
> Pumpkins and corn and tomatoes.
>
> Somewhere in those years as a teenager my feet found a comfortable size 
> and settled down in it, and I didn't outgrow the BiltRite Huron crepe 
> soled leather workboots that I'd gotten somewhere along the way.  They 
> were with me when we baled hay with the Rosenberger's down the road, and 
> when I painted the Ross's barns, and when we fixed the fenceline.  They 
> were cold and wet and later stiff on days when I should have chosen the 
> rubber knee-highs instead, but they were warm and clean and felt good on 
> evenings when we looked back on an empty hayfield and a full 
> sweet-smelling barn.
>
> Most of the years since then, 27 or 28 I guess, haven't seen me often in 
> the field.  Now and then the boots still come out, soles too smooth but 
> okay for what little I ask of them.  The tops seem unchanged, soft and 
> light brown up high by the little brass ears that I wrap the last few 
> turns of the laces around, but down low the bits of roofing tar, flecks of 
> paint, anonymous scuffs and nicks blend into the deep gray-brown of 
> history.  Such a plain thing, these boots, but they remember, and they 
> wait with me.  They keep faith while my work years are filled with desks 
> and talking and thinking and writing, while too many bills leave too 
> little left, while toy tractors on my desk and tractor shows in the 
> summer, and dreamed-of backyard barns unbuilt, fill in for the life of my 
> past and future.
>
>  Dean Vinson  --  Dayton Ohio
> <http://my.voyager.net/~vinsond/>
>
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