Monday, March 2, 2020

YOKEL ( 21 ) ~







To Build A Barn







To build a barn you need

Pallets, lots of them.

What do you mean pallets?

I mean pallets, that’s right —

Squared oak, ash, and beech slats

Found around factories, mills,

Trucking outfits, lumberyards.

Grimy, busted, smeared and

Heaped in piled debris, no one

Will argue if you want them.



So Everett’s wife brought a

Few home each day from the

Factory job tossed into the

Pickup truck and Everett

Would unload pallets

Everywhere — behind his house

And mother’s trailer, off to the

Corner pasture — and when

He had twenty he thought to have

Twenty more and when he stockpiled

Nearly two hundred he loaded

Each one onto his hay wagon,

Drove its bounty across the

Road and unloaded it all again

Where he would build his

Barn beside the brook.



You — who buy used barn board

At five dollars a foot and sound

Dry oak or chestnut timber

For post and beam structure

And have this idea that it

All takes money please take note —

Everett’s barn was built with 

Pallets, reused dimension and

Chunky hemlock framing milled

From his woodlot, built

In the worse conditions —

On a foundation that already had

One barn burn down mysteriously.

And after a full day’s work

We had the first floor deck

Finished in pallets and it

Snowed all the next day and

The next day after that we

Shoveled off the snow pad,

Went on building — kids and

Relatives handling pallets —

Bucket of all size nails

We dug into all day long.



That was living —

Since then, Everett finally

Gave up and moved away,

While the barn stands up

Ugly to everyone.





______________
Bob Arnold
Yokel
Longhouse
2011