A Place In Our Hearts...

 I'm not sure which I like better, the big red barn with it's loft full of hay and the rope and pulley hanging out over the hay loft door or the old weather beaten, run down barn with it's boards that no longer hold any paint (or many of the  nails for that matter). Barns have always had a place in American literature and therefore a place in our hearts.
  There's the barn with the loft that became the secret hiding place for many a child that grew up out in the countryside where the neighbors were few and far between. A secret hiding place to escape the daily chores or maybe even the switch for trying to escape the chores!
 Sometimes the barn was the next best thing to a ride at the county fair when the rope acted as a swing for a young daredevil to launch him/herself into a mountainous pile of hay below, oftentimes resulting in the acquisition of a new cast on one limb or another.
 Then there were those times that the old barn acted as a hide out for some outlaw that was on the lam. Of course more times than not he was the victim of an over zealous law officer who happened to catch his girl giving the aforementioned outlaw the eye which resulted in his unfortunate and untimely incarceration which, in turn led to his escape (with her help of course). All of this culminating in a showdown at the barn that, unfortunately but most probably, led to the barn burning to the ground after the lantern is knocked loose from it's perch during the scuffle between "good and evil"!

 Whew! All that being said, you can't deny the romanticism of the barn. Now I know that there are plenty of other situations that the hay lofts of America might bring to mind but I won't be going into all that here. It's not that kind of a blog...