A recent snowstorm with winds and freezing rain brought back the memory of one bird and his remarkable homing instinct. His name was Horton, a beautiful great horned owl that my sisters and I found one April day during
a hike that took us far from our property line.

The mature bird had a broken wing and was unafraid as we approached him near the edge of the woods we were leaving. We knew that injured wild animals should be left alone, or we could call a Conservation officer. Patrice, the elder of us at fourteen, picked him up with a gloved hand and that was it, the four of us trooped home.

His left wing was useless, but Horton could rise up and shrug out his shoulders to frightening proportions. We kept him in the basement where he would walk and climb about, and he was quite content to remain under
the pool table when it was in use. He could still catch mice, and a squeal or a crashing from below our living room floor encouraged our rehabilitative hopes.

We didn’t handle him much, but could easily approach him, as we often did to seek wise council or to collect a pellet. (To this day, I have trouble telling the difference.) When the great horned owl hooted from his stone-walled basement, the booming notes resonated through the oaken floors and filled
the house with a soul chilling sound that seemed to come from everywhere. Seven hoots to answer a relative roosting nearby.

As summer came to an end, it was decided to give Horton, whose fame had spread via newspapers and grapevine, to a neighbor who could take better care of him. The man wanted to use Horton as bait to hunt crows. The
black marauders despise owls and will mob them whenever they can. The man would tether their most hated of all owls, the great horned
owl, to a stump and have some good shooting.

The colors of fall turned to winter’s black and white and blue. A storm crashed in from the east, lots of drifting snow and on the second day, freezing rain. That evening, Dad heard a scratching against the first floor bedroom window overlooking the porch. Thinking a limb had dropped from the weight of ice, he went to investigate. He was greeted by Horton, on his back, with his talons ready to tangle. The owl was wet, and in a most decidedly bad mood. The flightless bird had escaped who knows when and walked miles home. Here was a crippled bird, with so much against him, finding his way back to safety. We were awestruck by this display of never giving up, or, as my sister’s gushed, eternal love.

After a few nights in the basement, we put Horton in the old chicken coop where he feasted on mice. The old bird never got over his bad mood. We’d leave corn to attract soon-to-be owl food, and could get near him, but he had
changed. When he died a few months later, my sisters and I gave him a secret funeral under a blossoming pear tree.

One such close call came the day our barn caved in on me, my twin sister and boyhood pal.

Larry Cobb was my neighbor and best friend.  We shared a love of hunting and outdoors and life without boundaries as most 13-year-old country boys do.

My twin sister and I were in the old barn counting pigeons when he joined us on the main floor of the barn.  It was a broken backed, unpainted timber frame barn built over a basement at the turn of the century.  The frame was hand hewn oak, shaped 12 inches square and cut to accept other bracing timbers. The roof was made of round cherry wood poles under tin sheeting, the barns’ second roof. The animals were sheltered in the basement that had doors facing west into the barnyard, while the rest of the foundation was built into the side of a hill using granite and other field stone. The second floor was actually the main floor.  Our tractor would pull the hay wagons across part of our backyard, past the silo and into the barn from the east side, which was level with our backyard.  The entrance was as large as any castle drawbridge opening and often took on that role as Larry and I would storm into it with our just made wooden swords.

On this day we were up to climbing to the top of the hay mow. Ladders had been built into the wooden wall trusses and Amy, Larry and I climbed one rising up the middle wall of the barn to near the roof and stepped onto the uppermost tier of bales. The summer’s harvest of hay bales were stacked almost to the ceiling in the northern part of the barn. The open window at the peak was the main source of light. The glass had been knocked from it long ago and now it was a gateway for the bats and pigeons to fly through. Pigeons would blast in from the light, across the hay into the opening of the entrance and roost in the other half of the barn.

We could almost reach the rusty, brown iron track rail hung just under the peak of the barn and running the length of the roofline.  This rail and a pulley were used to move heavy bales up from the wagons or down to the floor.  We didn’t use it for that, but the rail was just right to loop a rope over and make a swing.  Amy went first.  She backed up, lifted her feet and sailed
out and back.  Larry and I elbowed each other for the next turn as Amy came back and let go just as she was about to reverse direction.  She landed and was stock still.  A perfect swing out and back.

Since we all had been swinging for years, we had developed a variety of techniques. Swinging back upside down was popular. One handed, catching something, throwing something, sitting on the knot and counting how long before having to let go were some of the ways we had fun swinging for hours.

The air was thick with the aroma of Timothy and alfalfa hay and the tang of horse manure. The barn had seen the passing of many generations of animals and their waste in its basement.

Moisture from these sources rose like an acrid cloud to the ceiling of the basement and permeated the oak beams and the main floor planks. All this caused the ceiling beams of the basement to slowly rot. After so many years, the tonnage of hay above was all they could bear.

When I had my turn, I swung out, let go and dropped.  I fell only a few feet but had enough momentum to tilt the balance and the ancient oak and cherry floor beams thirty feet below gave way.

The haymow cracked open and I slid into the middle of the gaping maw.  I felt the rough stems of Timothy scratch my upraised arms and my legs were twisted by bales that seemed to tumble in all directions.  I kept my eyes open and fended off bales that came at me.  I gathered my feet beneath me and drew my arms down and protected my face. The bales were falling with me and I easily made room for myself and managed to stay what I thought was upright.

I had to avoid the crush of hay coming from above.  I fell to one side, pushing my airborne body out of the swirling chaos and landed on my back, outside of the cascading bales and fractured wood and into the summer dried manure of the basement floor.  I rolled, stood up and tried to breathe. Seconds had barely passed.

My hands went to my face to adjust my glasses.  I could see!  I hadn’t lost them!  That, and not being killed, a miracle- “thank you Lord!” I croaked from a dry throat.

I made my way over broken beams and bales to an eroded opening in the barn’s stone foundation near the silo on the east side.  I scaled up and out and walked into a now unfamiliar barn filled with dust and silent. Tall, vertical rays of corn-yellow afternoon sun slashed between the wood planked barn siding, and cleaved through the settling dust.

Looking up I saw Amy and Larry.  They were standing with their backs against the barn’s west wall and were inching sideways on a narrow horizontal wall support pole to a wooden access ladder 15 feet away.  They were about 20 feet up and intensely focused on getting to that ladder and not falling into the abyss that gobbled up their friend and brother.

Larry grabbed the ladder and reached out his other hand to help Amy.  They saw me and were relieved to see me alive.  They couldn’t stop talking as they came down the ladder and made their way across the broken haystack to where I was standing, surrounded by dust motes and golden blades of sun. “I thought for sure you were a goner,” Larry blurted.

“There was no way you were gonna make it with the whole summer’s worth of hay bales falling on you, It looked like the hay mow was eating you” Amy declared.

We looked up to the rope hanging from the rail. It was out of reach now, being too far up and away from a wall.

There would be no more swinging from it – no way, no dare, no how and we went about finding something else to do that day, but I can’t remember what it was.

Over dinner, it was decided not to repair the old barn, but build a new, safer pole barn.  Until then, we had to salvage what bales we could and stack them on the southern, stronger side of the barn.

Going to bed that night I thought how everything happened so slowly during the cave-in and how the rest of the day went by so fast.

I went to sleep trying to recite the Lord’s Prayer but I am sure I didn’t finish it.  I drifted asleep right after I gave thanks for surviving another day on the farm.

Reprinted from a family newsletter sent to friends in December 1967. written by Willah Weddon

It wasn’t too soon before Christmas, and it wasn’t too late. It was just the right time to bring home a Christmas tree. Father stopped to pick one from the dwindling collection offered by the Lions Club on our town square and carefully inspected each tree. There were half a hundred of them, all laid in rows, and they were all very little. It took a long time to pick one. Finally, he found one that was the tallest of them all, although it was as round as it was tall and thick as a bush. Paying the man in charge four dollars, Father put the little tree in the trunk of his new 1965 Buick Riviera and drove home.

The children gathered around as he pulled the tree out and stood it up. It was shorter than the smallest child. There were needles all over the inside of the trunk.

“We’ll put it in a bucket of water and let it soak,” Father said. “Then the needles will stop falling.”

“And maybe it will grow,” Alex said hopefully.

They tried to sweep the needles out of the trunk with a whisk broom. They stuck very tight to the upholstery, and when they came loose, the needles jabbed the children’s fingers. Father got one under his fingernail.

“These are miserable little needles,” he determined. Then he had to saw a piece off the bottom of the tree and trimmed a few lower branches so it fit into the water bucket. The tree sat in the water behind the house for a week. Each night, when the children got off the school bus, they inspected it. The needles continued to drop.

“It’s getting shorter,” Alex wailed.

“I don’t think it wants to be our Christmas tree,” Patrice said thoughtfully.

“It’s a miserable little tree,” Amy confirmed. Mother tried to console them.

“It will be nice when we get it in the front room.”

“But we’ve always had a big, beautiful one,” Patrice insisted. “We’ve got to do something.”

That Saturday Father announced, “Tomorrow we will put up the tree.”

The children looked at each other and nodded their heads. They had thought of something. Early in the morning, Patrice said she was going for a ride on her horse, Amidore. Alex agreed to go with her. It was cold and blowing. There was snow on the ground. Amidore pawed with her front hooves. She did not like the steel bit in her mouth. They did not put a saddle on her because they were going to ride double. Alex crawled up behind Patrice. The warmth of the animal felt welcome in the cold. Lad, the Collie, and Snoopy, the hound, followed along behind as they headed north into the fields toward the woods.

As they rode by a swale, two reddish-brown deer bounded out with their white tails waving like flags. As they leapt away, Snoopy bayed.

Father bundled up and went out to put the little tree in the standard so he could bring it into the house. It did not quite fit. He had to saw off more branches. When it finally went in, it skewed stubbornly to one side. He had to saw off a little more from the base. Still crooked. His hands grew cold. The stubs on the unyielding tree scraped and scratched his fingers. Father let out a yell. “Where are the children? They’ve always helped before.”

Inside the house, Mother shook her head sadly. “We’ve always had such a happy time putting up the decorations. This miserable little tree is making our Christmas miserable too.”

She put the potatoes in the oven with the chicken and decided to bake a cake—a treat to make everyone feel better. Suddenly Amy called down from upstairs. “Look out the window. Here they come.”

Alex was dragging a beautiful blue spruce behind him. Snoopy followed. Patrice came along leading Amidore. Lad trailed them all.

“See what we found, Dad,” they called out. “One of our own.”

Father looked up. He’d planted some pine trees a few years ago, way back by the woods. They had started to grow. But one long, cold winter the deer had nibbled the tops. Everyone thought they had killed the baby trees. He’d forgotten about them. Patrice had seen some growing when she had been out riding last summer. Remembering this, she’d told Alex, and they’d decided to go and see how big the trees had become. Alex had taken his Boy Scout hatchet along, just in case. This was a beautiful tree. Father smiled. Then he grabbed what was left of the little tree he had been trimming and sawing and shortening. He tossed it far over the eastern downhill slope of our hilltop back yard we called “the bank.”

The brittle collection of needles made a nasty sound as it landed. After dinner, the family decorated their new tree. Pine sap oozed from the tips of the branches and filled the rooms with the smell. Perfectly shaped, it reached nearly to the ceiling of the parlor. They put the star on top and admired it while enjoying chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream.

“It’s our own tree too,” Father said with pleasure. “Grown on our own farm.”

“There are more, not as large, but they will grow,” Patrice and Alex told him. “This one seemed just right for us.”

“Thank goodness we don’t have to put up with that miserable little tree,” Amy sighed.

“Shhh,” Father warned her. “That little bush might hear you, come back over the bank, and counterattack.”

Everyone laughed. It was a merry, merry Christmas after all.