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- Mar 8, 2011
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Long before I drew breath on this earth, my grandfather hastily built a barn to replace one burned down by a vagrant. He built it with nothing more than a hammer, a saw and a ladder. No level or plumb was needed, he just 'eyeballed' it. My grandfather is someone I never got to know as he died when I was just 8 months old.
That barn still stands today, and every time my dad comes home to Iowa, he always wants do drive by 'the old place' to look and reminisce. I've even stopped in and talked to the current owners, who allowed me to walk through it. And, to my astonishment.... some of my grandfathers pencil sketches and ciphering are still visible on the framework, some 70 years after he put his pencil to the wood.
So last year, I decided I'd take a photo of that old barn, enlarge it and have it framed. A perfect Father's Day gift, I thought, for someone who is now 84 and really doesn't need gifts. Granted, the barn isn't much to look at, and the photo isn't all that outstanding:
But, when I presented it to my dad, he had tears flowing down his cheeks. He sat and studied it for at least an hour, and kept picking it back up and studying it again on occasion for several days. His brother, my uncle (now 91), looked at it and dryly commented, "You wanna know how many years I spent in there milking the cows?"
He said it's probably the most wonderful gift he's ever gotten. The 12x24" framed image is now hanging in my dad's den in Texas, so now he can 'drive by the old place' any damned time he likes.
That's the power of a simple image.
That barn still stands today, and every time my dad comes home to Iowa, he always wants do drive by 'the old place' to look and reminisce. I've even stopped in and talked to the current owners, who allowed me to walk through it. And, to my astonishment.... some of my grandfathers pencil sketches and ciphering are still visible on the framework, some 70 years after he put his pencil to the wood.
So last year, I decided I'd take a photo of that old barn, enlarge it and have it framed. A perfect Father's Day gift, I thought, for someone who is now 84 and really doesn't need gifts. Granted, the barn isn't much to look at, and the photo isn't all that outstanding:
But, when I presented it to my dad, he had tears flowing down his cheeks. He sat and studied it for at least an hour, and kept picking it back up and studying it again on occasion for several days. His brother, my uncle (now 91), looked at it and dryly commented, "You wanna know how many years I spent in there milking the cows?"
He said it's probably the most wonderful gift he's ever gotten. The 12x24" framed image is now hanging in my dad's den in Texas, so now he can 'drive by the old place' any damned time he likes.
That's the power of a simple image.
