(The boy with the long, curly red hair is in almost every illustration, growing from little boy into young manhood)
1
I live just outside a little town, behind a long stone wall and under three heavy maple trees.
2
My latest family lives in the old, old house that was once a farm, not long ago.
3
And there’s their little boy with the long curly red hair, who’s always staring at me.
4
I heard them say that I was built in 1752, a big timber-frame barn, solid, they said, good for a hundred years…
5
…I must be way older than that by now. But, of course, time means nothing to me.
6
I even have a little baby barn, right behind me, built just a hundred years ago or so; and red, just like me.
7
Except my roof is leaking and my floors are sagging, and my red siding is fading away.
8
I can’t last much longer…I’m so old and frail now. I need somebody to build me back up.
9-10
I remember the times that I have seen: soldiers dressed in red, back when I was built; and soldiers dressed in blue, about four or five families after that. Then soldiers dressed in green, only a couple of families ago.
11
There was a time when I was strong and worked everyday at the farm: storing hay, sheltering the cows at night, the pigs in the winter.
12
But when the cows and the pigs left, I didn’t have much work to do anymore…
13 …though I still had the mice and the cats.
14
After that, it seems like all the little wild animals from all around came to live inside me.
15
I sheltered them all from rain and snow, and the cold of the night: the bats, the squirrels, the owls and the chipmunks.
16
I even had a tired old car for the longest time; and a pair of doves that seems to have lived in my gable window ever since the day I was built.
17
And once in a while, a mother raccoon with all her babies lived in the car!
18
Trees have come and gone; and my neighbor barn down the road is gone too.
19
Snowstorms are hard on me now; sometimes I can barely keep myself together.
20
And the winds blow right through me, and the fall leaves are everywhere.
21
One day I heard the father say, “We’ll have to take the barn down, my son; she’s too far gone.”
22
A day later, a crew of workers scampered all over me and took me apart, piece by piece by piece.
23
Until I was just a big hole in the ground, with my posts and beams stacked alongside.
24
Now the mice had no place to live, or the cats.
25
Neither did the owl, nor the group of bats.
26
But the pair of doves stayed on, and waited in the trees nearby. And waited and waited.
27
Finally, one day, the young man with the long curly red hair said, “Come on, Papa, let’s go out and build a barn.”
28
And they did build a new barn, just like I used to be; they took my old beams one by one, and nailed new wood to them.
30
And right on top in the middle of the roof they made a grand, shining cupola, that I never had before.
31
And before too long, I got a mouse and a cat, and an owl, and lots of bats.
32
And way up high, in the open gable window, the pair of doves.
