NOTE: THIS MAY SEEM A LITTLE OFF HE WALL…
EPISODE 102 AN OLD MAN’S WNER NIGHT…BESIDE THE QUEEN ELIZABETH HIGHWAY
A PLACE WE’VE ALL PASSED…WHAT WAS HERE 40 YEARS AGO
alan skeoch
august 2020
It took a long time to find the picture. Without the picture this story has
no meaning.
About 40 years ago Was driving along the North Service road just above the
big Ford Assembly plant. Right beside the Queen Elizabeth super highway.
Winter time but getting close to spring. A place you have all seen because today
there are two glass and aluminum modern office buildings in that place.
Bu 40 years ago there was a barn. Old style barn that had never been elevated.
Guessing a date of 1850 or earlier. The barn looked bad. Defeated. Empty
Abandoned. Doomed. Sad. All to these. So I pulled in to get this picture (below)
Attempting to record something that was about to disappear.
Just as I held up the camera an elderly man walked out of the stable.
Was I trespassing? No. I was on the road shoulder. But he walked
toward me anyway.
“This had been our farm for better part of a century, son.”
“Mind if I take a picture.”
“Go ahead.”
“It must be hard to part with .”
“Very hard.”
He looked at me…I think he wanted to see in my face if I really gave a
damn about him and his former farm. He must have seen something in me.
“You know son, I got a lot of money for this farm
but it means noting to me. I wish I had it back.
I wish I could still farm. What am I going to do
with money?
That incident has preyed on my mind for the last four decades.
Every time I see those twin towers of glass and aluminum, I see
that old man. And I hear him.
That, however, is not the end of the story.
THIS IS THE PICTURE…NOT MUCH, RIGHT?
Many years later we were driving up the access ramp on the other side of
the QEW. Exactly across the highway from the old man’s farm.
“Dad…big fire over there.”
“Barn fire.”
Sure enough a large barn was engulfed in flames. Not much anyone
could do but look. And there was a crowd gathering
Another of our Ontario wooden agricultural cathedrals
was being reduced to ashes.
Every time we drive along the QEW and start to enter the curve
down to the Ford Motor Company plant
I see both of these barns.
And I hear the old man speaking about the meaningless of his
sudden great wealth.
(This picture above is not the barn that was burning. But it is similar. So many are gone.)
Take another look while you read Robert Frost’s ‘An Old Man’s Winter Night’
alan skeoch
august 2020
An Old Man’s Winter Night by Robert Frost
www.robertfrost.org/images/postquote.png); overflow: auto; background-position: left top; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;” class=””>
All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him – at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; – and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man – one man – can’t fill a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It’s thus he does it of a winter night.
NOW EVERY TIME YOU TAKE THE QEW WESTWARD YOU MAY SEE THE OLD BARN
AND HEAR THE OLD MAN….EVERY TIME YOU SEE THESE BUILDINGS.
alan skeoch
august 2020
