Finally after weeks of preparation, the night of the Barn Party has arrived! My daughter Bryn and I have finished putting the final touches on our remodeled 1878 vintage barn, hanging the 150 bulb string of Christmas lights, putting the colored and black lites in the ceiling fan suspended from the hand-hewn beam above the center of the main floor, and pounding the stakes into the ground that will serve as the supports for the parking signs which will direct the guests to our newly mown pasture er, parking lot; I even have a "deep do-do" sign in case people wander to close to the manure pile. It's the culmination of a long project designed to get me sanely through the winter. You see I have this concern about the winter. I hate it. I love light and the beauty it reveals. Darknesss has never done much for me. I was in Alaska in August of 1995 and experienced the Land Of the Midnight Sun. It was great! I was so energetic. There was so much time to be active.
So winter to me has always seemed the antithesis of the midnight sun phenomonem. Creating work for myself has been a good way to keep my mind occupied and off the winter blues. This season I decided to remodel the barn. Termites through the years had exacted a large toll on its main beams and posts. We needed more floor space, a nice area for the horses' tack, better siting of the firewood and equipment. The work has gone really well. I've just kept plugging away and the pride of accomplishment is there. I like just sitting there on a winter day, the late afternoon sunlight pouring through the large jalousie windows on the west wall. The barn is close to its original construction. It has oak beams with hand-carved mortise and tenon joints. It, to me, is a marvel of patience. Today we take no time to build barns and the character reflects it. They resound with galvanized tin. This place reeks of the past. Must have taken a long time to build. You can still see clearly each cut made with the broad axe that was used to square the oak logs. No doubt the trees came from the surrounding tree-covered hillsides. The siding of the barn is yellow poplar, also called Tulip tree. It's terribly weather worn and shows clearly one hundred years of deterioration caused by wasps and hornets. They chew the wood to make the pulp with which they build their paper nests. I've got plenty of nests in the rafters though few of them are active. Mainly they're the remants of nurseries past. On any given day in the summer though, you can see the wasps and hornets chewing on the siding. I am reluctant to replace the boards though. I've got a historic structure here. The men whose ax marks are so obvious probably lay buried in the cemetery up the road. Some time back in a moment of reverie I decided to invite all our friends to the barn some summer evening for a big party. The other half of the reason to have a party involves my music-loving friends. Ken, plays bass and has a local community radio program featuring the Blues. He's only been playing a short time. Jim, a friend for 17 years is a long time golfing buddy and amateur musician. Loves guitar and the limelight of performance. These two have formed a band with some other guys I know and they have been jamming together. It dawns on me to invite them to play at the Barn Party. It will give them their chance to play before a real live audience. When I propose it to them, they jump at the chance. So tonight the new band, calling themselves Open to Ridicule or O2R for short, will perform their repetoire of songs, maybe an hour of music. Of course, I'm hoping they'll play longer. I have bales of hay on the dirt floor portion of the barn for people to sit on. In the loft, too. Lawn furniture and old chairs are strategically placed so the band can be seen. There's room to dance.
Bryn and I
made some luminaries that will be placed on the forty
foot long foot bridge that crosses the creek which
runs through the front yard of our place. We have
sixteen acres here, surrounded by thousands of acres
of state land. It is idyllic. Tonight it is
enchanted. The tree frogs intone as rain seems
likely.
I have placed candles in the miniature Mayan temples
that I have made from local limestone and placed
about the property. One temple supports the foot
bridge, another, looking somewhat like El Castillo at
Chichen Itza in the Yucatan, covers an old cistern
dug by the former owner in an attempt to secure a
water source in this ground water scarce area. The
final temple is a sytlized replica of the House of
the Governors from Uxmal near Merida, the capital
of
the state of Yucatan in Mexico. It is a bench
really, located at the confluence of the two branches
of the little creek that winds it way down our little
valley.
The guest arrive about 7:30 and in a short time there
are some forty people here. Everyone is exclaiming
how beautiful everything is and spirits are high.
Pretty soon the band begins to play. They are
excited and the strength of their emotion comes
through the music. It's good! The barn is like a
spruce sounding board. Maybe I have the wasps to
thank for the acoustics. Them and the rural electric
company as the boys have the amps turned up! But
those good vibes soften the heart and warm the hands.
I notice that even though I'm wearing a short
sleeved shirt on a cool night, I'm not cold.
People break into
small groups conversing, smiling, tapping the hands
or feet to the beat. For me, the effort has been
worth it. It's working, the party that is. The joy
on people's faces is what has made it worth it. I
play the role of observer, trying not to get too
wrapped up in the event, or drinking too much. I
find that the perspective from the loft, looking down
at the main floor, is a particularily good one.
My good buddy Bob, a professional musician living in
Ohio, has come to the party too, so when the bands'
repetoire ends, Bob comes on stage to fill the gap.
He's got the energy it takes, and following his lead
the band plays on. And on, until about midnight,
when everyone is gone but the band. "Hey T," they
ask me, "What shall we do?" I respond, "If you're
having fun, keep playin'! So they do, for another
half hour.
After a big party, you can imagine the mess. But I
tell people to let it slide, that I'll clean up in
the morning.
June 11th
