The Old Shed

Being an only child one sometimes makes their own friends. So it was on trips out to the farm when I was a young boy. The farm itself was wonderous, but it was grandpa’s shed that always drew my attention because inside that shed is where his John Deere 110 lawn and garden tractor rested. Sitting on that curved yellow seat and I was John Wayne searching for bad guys; I was Joe Friday leading a dragnet to catch a bank robber. Sometime I was the bank robber being chased as I made my way back to a secret cave where a gang of equally dangerous desperados waited for my return.

The farm. There were dogs and pigs. Endless rows of corn, woods with a path to a small lake, but the shed was what called me.

When grandpa died the farm died with him. Grandma sold the pigs and leased out the 200 acres. The tenant was Mr. Froyer, a tall man with large hands and round glasses, and even though he was a nice man I never took to him. Maybe it was the wooden entrance sign he mounted at the cutoff from county road 18 that led west to the farm that read Froyer Acres with “Tally “Ho” etched underneath. I was never sure why he needed a sign. Folks should know enough to be able to get to a place without a sign telling them they found it.

Or maybe it was because he got rid of the John Deere and replaced it with a new riding mower.

Tough like my grandma, the shed survived the changes Mr. Froyer brought to the place. They both withstood snow and rain, hot and cold. Lightning eventually took the shed in the summer of ’78 and a stroke took grandma that fall. It was maybe like she hung around just long enough to make sure that nothing would happen to grandpa’s shed, and when the shed finally died, well, you know.

I took a break from packing up the last of grandma’s belongings and walked over to the patch of dirt where the shed once stood. I smiled at how such a large structure managed to fit into such a small space. I kneeled down and ran my hand through the dirt. I closed my eyes and heard police sirens and horses and felt the hot Arizona wind whip past my face as my chestnut quarter horse raced back to my hidey hole.

The old shed wouldn’t let me forget.

#RagtagDailyPrompt for today: The old shed

#RDP