The coach is at the door at last; The eager children, mounting fast And kissing hands, in chorus sing: Good-bye, good-bye, to everything! To house and garden, field and lawn, The meadow-gates we swang upon, To pump and stable, tree and swing, Good-bye, good-bye, to everything! And fare you well for evermore, O ladder at the hayloft door, O hayloft where the cobwebs cling, Good-bye, good-bye, to everything! Crack goes the whip, and off we go; The trees and houses smaller grow; Last, round the woody turn we sing: Good-bye, good-bye, to everything! by Robert Louis Stevensons
When I was six my two older brothers and I lived in a big old farm house. It had a chicken coop filled with chicks and a rooster. We also had two huge pigs, one Irish Setter and a couple of cats. At summer’s end my parents, aunt and uncle and us three kids actually went out in a big wagon with side boards that had clamps holding pitch forks and we gathered up cut down hay from the fields, piled it up in the wagon, brought it to the barn and loaded it up in the second level of the barn up to the rafters.
When the work was done my parents would place a large pile of hay on the ground right under the small open door in the top of the barn. When the day was at end, the wagon was empty, and the grown ups were tired, thirsty, and hungry, they left us to play. Our playing was climbing up the ladder and jumping out the small door and landing on the pile of hay on the ground, repeating this action over and over until it got dark or mom called us in.
Image:https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2021/04/the-vanished-community-of-lost-cove.html
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