Tuesday, March 2nd and NO tennis!

 Terry

Terry woke about 7:15 and is now reading the paper.  She has water therapy this afternoon at 1:00 (gym) and 2:00 (water).  We have not ventured into our pool here but maybe today.  

Well for the third day this week our court was put on overflow which means IF you really want to play there may be a time in the afternoon.  Yesterday we played at 3:00 which is not ideal.  Today we just will not play and I am guessing we will not play again on Thursday.  Disappointed but I will use the time to continue to work on taxes which I THINK may be close to finished.  Actually I should be finished as they are pretty darn simple but we are having a different company do them and it looks like we can do a virtual thing which I can NOT figure out as of now.

With no tennis today and Sonia coming at 9:00 I think I may just go get a haircut.  I hate getting haircuts but it is a necessary evil in my mind.  You would think that after 50+ years I could put the "farm" haircuts behind me but NO.  You put a small towel around you neck and then AFTER there was no way to bathe or shower!  In my mind I was itchy for a long time.  I know, as Terry may say, "Get over it Carmen".  

I am on a mission to lose some weight in the month of March.  I feel I have to unless I want to become a balloon man kind of.  Well I did not eat much yesterday and believe it or not at 8:30 last night my stomach was making funny kind of noises.  As I stepped on the scale this morning I thought to myself this is going to be good!  As I stared down at the scale it showed a measly .6 less of body weight.  What the heck I thought for all the suffering I went through yesterday it could have, should have been better than that!!!  Well today is another day and MAYBE, just MAYBE there will be more success today.  I will, again, give it the old college try, at my age that is difficult, and we will see what tomorrow brings.  I guess I should be happy that there was success even if it was not what I wanted.

THE BARN

This is the barn AFTER it was in disrepair over many years.  I know it does not look like a playground but for us it was a wonderful place to play and also work!

If there was anything on the farm that defined our country living it was the barn.  It was a barn like no other in the area.  Most farms had two store barns with the top floor being used for storage of hay and the bottom being used for milking etc.  Not the barn on the Lee farm.  It was a long rectangular building with hay being stored in the north third of it and milking etc in the rest.  Some of the memories that linger in my mind are these:

• The milking section was on the west side of the barn.  There were way too many stanchions for what we needed.  I would say there were at least 10+ stanchions and we never used more than 6.  It was all concrete with a trough behind where the cows could relieve themselves!!!  Behind that was a walkway with several windows.  That meant when (or if) Dave and I decided to clean we could throw the manure out the window or we could take one of the shovels and push it all the way to the south and then throw it out the SW door.  If I remember it would not be uncommon to have some of the window panes broken.  There was a wide path down the middle of the barn that led to the large water tank on the south end of the barn.  The water tank was in the SE corner and that pen had the only concrete floor of all the pens of which there were 4.  It was good planning to have the water tank at the front of that pen with concrete floor because Dave and I forgot to shut the water off countless times which meant a flooded pen where you needed to scoop the water out of! I have never wondered this before but I have NO idea where that water came from.  I do not remember any well in the barn etc but there had to be.  I remember well problems in the house but have no idea where it was for the barn.  The other pens had dirt floors but Dave and I tried to kind of keep them clean with straw on the floor.  As one could guess there were times when the manure got a little deep in some of the pens.  There were windows in the east wall so it was not a big deal to open a window and throw the manure out into the manure spreader but I confess Dave and I did not do that nearly often enough!  Of the 4 pens the one to the north was the one we used the most as we often had calves in it.  Right by that pen was the door that was used to come and go.  By that door was a shelf where we often had dishes to put milk in for the cats.  Interesting as we NEVER feed the cats anything but milk so I am guessing they feasted on mice most of the time.  Well that is not really true as in the summer both Dave and I would often bring the blackbirds we shot and give them to the cats.  The best place to shot blackbirds was the groove of trees where the shop and outhouse were.  The shop was where we parked the Ford tractor and the outhouse was where we did our business and then stayed a bit longer to figure out what our life was going to be when we "flew the coup" so to speak.  I mean in the outhouse the subjects ranged from college, work, girls, family, girls, travel, girls etc!!!  Anyway back to the barn.  Often the north third, which was the hay barn, was pretty empty as winter passed and summer arrived.  So the hay barn was a place to play ball and just spend time goofing around.  AND as I have mentioned before there often was a game of tag as we ran on the beams above the pens etc.  I would be remiss if I did not mention perhaps my favorite part of the barn which was the roof.  A wonderful place to lie and dream of things far away!  AND as I have written before the south wall of the barn was a great place to bounce the ball against as the Braves would play the Yankees and the Braves always won!  I could do that in the summer as the cows pretty much stayed in the pasture so the barnyard was clean and dry.  I should also mention how we fed the cattle in the winter BEFORE Dad had the hay stacks moved as whole.  We would drive up to the hay field with the Ford pulling the hay rack and fill it with hay.  Then it would sit in the yard and each morning we would open the gate on the NW corner of the barn and drive into the barn yard.  Then as one of us drove around the barn yard the other would throw hay out into the yard.  Then maybe once a week or so we would unload a hayrack into the hay barn as there was a door on the north wall.  That would be for feeding the cows when we milked and also if we had any calves in the pens.  Before I wrap up about the barn I need to mention shooting sparrows roosting in the rafters in the winter.  To this day I wonder how many tiny holes we put in the roof and for sure never mentioned it to Dad..

Milking in the winter with the kerosene lantern providing light

Of course there had to be some fun before the work of pitching the hay into the hay barn

I should mention that the last time I visited Dave, which was in June of 2019, he mentioned that when the farm burned many of his things that had been stored in the barn when they moved to Iowa were destroyed.  Among them were a VW car which he intended to restore and a radial arm saw that was still in the box.  

Here it is after 9:00 and time to get to work.  The FP is almost history.