Relative Something

We received advance notice about the scheduled destruction of our barns and Mom drove us there to see it and take some pictures. For some reason, Dad wasn’t available and so Mom had to do the picture taking. Photography was his domain and she felt a lot of pressure about it, I could tell. Most of the pictures she took did come out a bit over-exposed and she mentions her regret every time she sees the images.

It was really strange to be stopped on the shoulder of this freeway, where no stopping was allowed. We couldn’t get out of the car, but we sat on the opened windows of the passenger side and looked over the top. I saw a man go in one of the bottom doors with a can. Then he appeared at the big opening of the upper floor. He threw the can out and he jumped. Soon there were billows of flame and clouds of dark smoke. Ours wasn’t the only car on the shoulder any more as others stopped to take in the spectacle.

I wish I had been old enough to fully realize the emotion of the moment. I knew it was something dramatic, but the full depth of it was beyond me. It was the biggest fire I had ever witnessed, so that was sure something, yet I knew it was more than that and it was beyond my capacity to comprehend the full extent.

They burned the two large barns, one right after the other. That left just the house. For some reason, they didn’t burn that down. Whatever was salvageable was removed. Windows were taken out. The huge hand-hewn beams in the living room ceiling were saved and claimed by a neighbor who had asked for them. My older brother has some of the ornate hardware from light fixtures and door handles and has incorporated it into his current home. I think he has the chandelier too.

They cleared out almost every last tree. That may have been the most monumental task of all. There were plenty, and the majority, mature. We stopped by to capture some shots of that phase. With the house nothing but a shell, they collapsed it and buried it. The land was graded so that the rolling hill terrain became a flat plain, ideal for an industrial park – a series of one or two-story brick and concrete, flat-roofed buildings. One of them has the address number 7601 on it, the same as our old farmhouse: 7601 Washington Avenue.

Washington Avenue is where the Minnesota Vikings NFL football team home office and workout facility is now located, just down the road from our old spot. For 18 years I worked for a company located just around the corner from where our old farmhouse stood. And across the freeway from the old place, next to the golf course and park, Cyndie’s childhood home, that her family had built and lived in for 35 years. I always found it interesting to have my work and my in-laws so near to the place where I lived as a kid. It has changed immensely on the surface, but it still remains at the same geographic coordinates.

I don’t have strong regrets about the loss of that farm, but I do miss it.

The back porch, before and after

The industrial park that replaced the house and barns