Which Barn is it Anyway?

This whole barn ques­tion start­ed with Robin Rothman’s Four Barns prints for the Danville His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety. Dur­ing the 70’s and 80’s, Robin roamed the back roads of the area, sketch­ing inter­est­ing look­ing things. At the time, she was an art stu­dent at Anti­och Col­lege and her moth­er had a house way back in North Danville. Forty or fifty years lat­er, four of these sketch­es have been repro­duced for the pub­lic in the form of lim­it­ed prints and note cards. 

It’s fun­ny how mem­o­ry works. Of the four sketch­es, one of the barns has raised some eye­brows. Robin would write on the bot­tom of most of the draw­ings notes about where they were sketched. That is a good thing, because things change con­sid­er­ably in a land­scape, and mem­o­ries that we thought were crys­tal clear have some­how become dis­tort­ed through time.

The barn in ques­tion had such a note: “Barn that stood across Rt. 2 from school in Danville.” It is of a dilap­i­dat­ed look­ing build­ing with all kinds of appendages—a square silo, a cupo­la, a long, slant­ed shed on the left, sev­er­al doors askew on the front and a large tree grow­ing up among sur­round­ing foliage. It has a gam­brel roof and a shed dormer, too. Also, the front treat­ment of the clap­boards looks odd, because Robin has made the tone of clap­boards dark­er in patch­es on the front of the barn. When we print­ed the sketch­es, Robin said, “Oh, that barn got burnt or torn down.”

When I showed the sketch to Dot (Ayer) Larrabee, she stud­ied it a bit and said, “They used to have dances in that barn. But that isn’t how I remem­ber it. I’m not sure it is the right one.”(Of course, Dot was liv­ing in West Danville as a young woman and had the ben­e­fit of the ele­gant Point Com­fort dance hall.) Winona Gadapee dropped in, and her mem­o­ry is almost always a sure thing. 

“That was part of the Smith house,” she said, hold­ing the sketch in her hand. Things looked a lit­tle dim for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as she began shak­ing her head in con­fu­sion. I got a phone call just then and Winona kept the sketch in hand for quite a span. When I hung up, she said, “Don’t throw the idea away, though,” she said. “My par­ents took me to some dances in the barn on Route 2 and that may be where we came in,” she said, her fin­ger trac­ing the slant­ed shed. “And that looks like where we stood inside,” she said, point­ing this time to the shed dormer. There was a lot of room for danc­ing up there.” She also informed me that it had burned in 1950 and her hus­band, Arnie, had helped fight the fire.

I went back into the archives and brought out a 1929 all-class pho­to of Phillips Acad­e­my, and we looked at the Smith place, house and barn, which are in the back­ground of that pho­to. The roof of that barn isn’t gam­brel. We know that Jane and Guil Kitchel own a barn now on that loca­tion, a nice new­er-look­ing red one right on Route 2. It has a gam­brel roof, but it is a far cry from the barn in the sketch. Did Guil build a new one in the old one’s place? 

On my way home that evening, I hap­pened to meet up with Robin; the note card was in my hand, and I explained that the barn was some­what of a mys­tery. I was won­der­ing if she may have been mis­tak­en in her note tak­ing. “I sat right across the road and sketched it!” she said with­out hes­i­ta­tion. I had to find fig­ure this one out.

First, I called Guil, who is very atten­tive to details when it comes to his­to­ry. When I explained the conun­drum, he said his barn (the red one) was built in 1941. He also said there was a fire in 1950, start­ed by a dis­grun­tled hired man in the hay loft, but the barn had been saved. “You can see where some of the clap­boards have been scorched,” he said. 

With this new infor­ma­tion, I went back with my cam­era the next morn­ing. I still had the sketch in hand and when Guil came out to vis­it about it, he held the note card in his hand and nod­ded. “This is how it looked when we got it in the 80’s,” he said. We looked at the red barn from all angles. He explained the dif­fer­ent things he had done to it, includ­ing tak­ing all the old appendages off and clear­ing the foliage. Even the tin cupo­la, pop­u­lar and inex­pen­sive in the 40’s, was unsta­ble and had to be tak­en down. “It’s a good barn, though,” he said, “great place for stor­age.” On the back, he showed me the scorched clap­boards. “I had to replace the front ones, because they were rot­ted, but I haven’t replaced these yet.” 

Mys­tery solved. 

I called Winona and told her all about it, ask­ing for any sto­ries she may have about the dances. “Oh my, I was just in junior high. My mom and dad took me to them. I remem­ber think­ing the Hale boy was pret­ty cute, and he was there. Mom and Dad didn’t much like that, but they took him home that night in the back of the pick­up. They were clean dances,” she said, “coun­try style with a band.” They did square and string dances. “The barn seems small­er, now. There was room for a lot of dancers,” she said.

Talk about syn­chronic­i­ty. Glenn Bad­ger from Dan­bury, CT, son of Gene­va and Phil Bad­ger, walked into His­tor­i­cal House the next day. His fam­i­ly was liv­ing in the Smith house dur­ing this peri­od of time. He well remem­bers the dances held in the barn. His Aunt Mag­gie, who was in a wheel­chair, took tick­ets and his par­ents set up a con­ces­sion stand just inside the door at the top of the high dri­ve. “Steamed hot dogs and that sort of thing,” he said. “Danville was a dry town in those days,” said Glenn. “Peo­ple would keep alco­hol in their cars and would go in and out for that.” He said the Texas Ram­blers, a coun­try band from St. Johns­bury, played and rememe­berd in par­tic­u­lar a woman named Kay who played the piano and Judge, the leader of the band. 

Arnie Gadapee was work­ing at Marty’s where I caught up with him to ask about the fire. It seems it was deer sea­son and he and his bud­dies, Bob and Bill Beat­tie, had skipped school and gone deer hunt­ing up at the camp behind Beattie’s. “We could see the fire from up there,” he said, “and we came back to help put it out. I remem­ber get­ting onto a hose in the sta­ble part of the barn, stand­ing in my sneak­ers, water up to my knees. Poor Bob was up on the roof and some­one swung an axe and hit him in the head with it. I think they had to take him up to Dr. Paulsen for some stitch­es.” When asked if he knew the sto­ry about the hired man start­ing the fire he said, “Now that you men­tion it, that rings a bell.”

I called Kate Beat­tie to see what she remem­bered about the hired man, but she wasn’t at home. Occie, her son, answered, and when I told him what I was call­ing about, he said he remem­bered sit­ting in school and watch­ing the fire out the win­dow. “Any­thing about the hired man?” I asked.