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"BARNS" # 1
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You will think this is the tallest tale that you've ever read yet on Mil's Place! Yet it is true- every word---as well as I can remember anything that happened sixty-seven years ago! I once had a granary right out there on the La Casita School playground, just through the gate and to the right---about where we did the Maypoles every year. The story sounds strange but it happened! Actually, I was only part owner; it was mostly my Dad's. Well, okay, it was really ALL Dad's. Better story, though, if we play like it was mine---you know: MY school, MY playground, MY friends....MY granary!
It all went down like this. Dad had managed and operated the Magic Steam Laundry, down on W. Grand from 1938 through WWII. He had done it with not one single day off, sick or well. Nobody else could safely operate the steam boiler. He was it. Wanting a change, he bought a piece of land near Ranchvale and planned to take up wheat farming. This required equipment and seed to plant. He needed a place to store seed, so he ordered a granary built by someone. I didn't know who.
About that time some carpenters came onto the school grounds to do some building project on the school itself. I never knew what they were doing.There was lumber lying around for that work, and then one day a big batch of lumber was trucked in and stacked out there on the east end of the playground, near the school but across the dividing fence, close to the Maypole place. Why out there, away from anything? Maybe they needed a surface harder than concrete---the playground! (LOL)
Their purpose soon became evident. A shed of about 22X15 began to take shape. Built of pine, it had a slanted tin roof. It had a regular door and a little door up toward the roof, kind of like a window. It looked to me sort of like what a granary might look like.
I mentioned it to Dad and he said: "That IS OUR granary! They apparently decided for some reason to have their crew build it there." I proudly told a lot of kids that it was MY GRANARY, though a little of that goes a long way with kids! (I think they were jealous!)
One day the finished granary was there, and the next it was gone...through what big fence opening I never figured out. The next time I saw my granary, it was painted BARN RED and sitting proudly at our farm. It held seed for many wheat crops over many years, and many people were fed. If it is still there, it is sixty-seven years old, and likely needs a paint job.
At any rate, if it means anything, I can say I'm probably the only little kid attending La Casita
School that ever had his very own private granary out there on that HARD playground! For a little while anyway! There are probably not many folks living in this world today that remember that incident.
(For a teen-ager, it was not what you would call a "happy" granary, for to fill it with wheat, you had to drive a big wheat truck right next to it, then under that high door/window and in the hot summer, shovel 10,000 lbs. of wheat in big heavy scoop shovels---over your shoulder and through the window!)
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BY MIL
8/23/12
Sent from my iPad
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