Contrasts

These are both from our drive north the other day. Both are drive-by shots.
Isn't there a world of difference between the two? The top was taken very late in the evening...it was verging on getting dark and the ISO was set at 800...
This was taken on the way so was in daylight...ISO set at 400. Both are a tad out of focus...it is harder to succeed with drive by shots if looking out the side window. It tends to show the motion more.

If you look close, in that top one there is a line through it...I have no idea what it is caused by. No idea at all. Still, it is another where you can only imagine what kind of life has happened within its walls. I have a harder time looking at barns and knowing what went on...

When I look at old houses, I can hear children's laughter ring out and sometimes I imagine I can hear wives and/or mothers crying at the loss of a child or husband. But with a barn it is different. I think because I don't know if it was used just for storage, or for working in, or if animals lived within its walls at any time.

I always wish I could enter the barns though, just as much as I do a house. Maybe because I had so much fun in our barn....I guess this is something I should have told a while back when telling random things about myself.

When I was young, say along 7, maybe eight years old...I used to go to the barn and play by myself. I would get up in the loft and just sing and sing....songs like Henry the 8th for one...that is the only one I remember for sure. And I would pretend I was singing to an audience. So there, I don't know if I have ever shared that with a soul....

Or I would pretend to be a trapeze artist...on the tier poles we had a sort of swing. It was short but wide with a 'pole' of sort to sit on. It wasn't a board...and I have no idea where it came from. It was probably 2 to 3 inches through and worn very smooth...no bark on it. I would hand upside down from it, climb across the tier poles, and what all else I can't remember. But I had fun.

Some of it, I couldn't even watch my kids do now; have no idea how mom lived with us. Some of it she probably didn't know. We didn't always gather the fodder in from the corn but a few years we did, and it stood on the side with no loft above it...well, I know me and my one brother would go up in the loft and jump over and out and land in it. Not Neal, though maybe he did it too. I just can't remember. But I know one thing...it would have been my brother that had the nerve to try it the first time.

Now one thing Neal did do was this thing--don't think we had a name for it. But I was little then...5 or 6 years old. He would lay in the hay on his back and raise his feet up and I would lay across his feet on my belly and hold to his hands and then he would launch me on to the other hay. I can remember wanting him to do it more and more. That is another thing I don't know if our mom knew about or not.

So that is another thing I think about when I look at barns...I wonder if any kid played in them.