Hay Barn

Hay Barn

Jay T. should never have gone into that barn. None of us should have, but especially Jay T. He was the youngest and the littlest member of our group.

I call us a group because “gang” seems to connote a touch of nefariousness that doesn’t describe us at all. We were just a bunch of pre-teen, free range neighborhood kids who grew up together and looked to each other for comradeship. Worst we ever did was to harvest a few watermelons from patches that did not belong to us. Come to think of it, those melons, cooled in Mile Branch stream, have never been matched by any bought at the grocery store.

We were always available to each other for a pickup game of baseball, a two mile hike to swim at the gravel pit, tom-walker king of the hill contests, or explorations. Explorations include finding ways into locked buildings and gathering there to tell tall tales to each other and generally hang out together. That’s where the hay barn comes into the story.

It was an old barn predating construction from the 30’s and 40’s that grew up near by. Pine Street to Main Street, then left on Sibley Road, down the hill a ways, and the barn was on the right, not far from the railway tracks. I do not remember who knew the trick of getting in. It was probably part of the lore passed down by an older brother to someone in our group. It involved climbing up a tree to get to an opening between the exterior wall and the rafters large enough for a skinny kid to squeeze through. And we were all skinny kids.

The barn was in active use because it was about two thirds full of stored hay bales, the rectangular kind, not the round ones that are popular now. By rearranging the location of some of the bales, we could sit pretty much in a circle, arrange hay bale steps up to our entrance, and voila, we had ourselves a club house.

We were gathered there one hot, humid summer day telling jokes, sort of like a contest to see who knew the vilest, dirtiest, revolting joke possible, and there was no shortage of them. Doug was right in the middle of telling what was probably the winning joke when we heard a noise at the barn door, and the door opened. We scurried behind hay bales and nooks to hide. In walked a man, wearing khaki pants, a khaki shirt, and a well worn sweat stained hat.

“Y’all come on out. I know you’re in here,” he yelled.

Doug bolted first, angling between the man and the open barn door. As the man turned toward Doug, others ran out the door from the other side, all the while the man shouting “Stop! Stop Dammit.”

No one stopped of their own volition. But Jay T. was grabbed by his arm as he tried to run, and held there.

The rest of us regrouped at the town gazebo Grand Stand a few blocks away. A couple of us had seen Jay T. get grabbed, and we pondered what to do. Ideas included not telling anyone about it, going back to the barn as a group and turning ourselves in, or just waiting to see what happened. We took the wait and see option.

About an hour later, Doug and I strolled nonchalantly past the barn. It was locked up tight and there was no activity there. Back to the Grand Stand, and I agreed to drop by Jay T.’s house later on to see if he was there.

Right before dark, I reluctantly knocked on Jay T.’s door. His mother answered, and I asked, “Hi, Can Jay T. come out to play?”

She looked at me, “No, he may not. He is grounded for today, and maybe for tomorrow.”

“Yes Mam, “ I said. “I’ll check back tomorrow.”

I skipped home. Secure knowing that Jay T. was okay.

We never went back to the barn. We moved our meetings to one of the exhibition buildings at the fairgrounds.