“They are landmarks, they are icons,

They are metaphors, they are symbols.

There’s so much meaning packed into them,

And their day has now sadly passed.

They’re now as obsolete as the steamship,

As the coal fired locomotive.”

Will Weaver

Sadness truly filled my heart and my soul

As I wandered an old country lane yesterday

A building that had stood here since childhood

Had suddenly vanished – it was bulldozed away

I’ll never forget the day I first saw it

Almost fifty years ago it has to be now

I had taken a train out here from the big city

How this building had captivated me somehow

I remember finally mustering enough courage

To ask the old farmer if I could just peek inside

To my utter delight and to my utter amazement

I had brightened his day and filled him with pride

“I don’t get many folks these days asking about it,

My father and I built it together with our own hands;

It was really a labor of love for both me and my Dad,

I always thought it was a wooden structure most grand.”

As this kind old gentleman showed me all around it

There was both pride and disappointment in his eyes

“My sons don’t seem much interested in farmin now,

And it makes an old farmer like me really wanna cry.”

I visited that kind old gentleman several more times

Always marveling at this majestic barn he had made

But one sad day when I made yet another trip out here

Someone in his family told me that he had passed away

Several times since that very sad day

I’ve wandered out here just to reminisce

About an American way of life now gone

A good old fashioned way of life that I miss

Most of the small family farms in America today

Are now sadly gone and their small plots of land sold

Today most farming in America is done by corporations

They have very little need for nostalgic barns growing old

And to think that it was only a mere century or two ago

When these rugged old barns were built by very rugged men

And now even the old-growth forests which provided their timber

Have almost all disappeared and America will never see them again

Although historical societies try to preserve some of these barns

The face of our nation has now changed from family to company

Our nation which was built by rugged individuals like that old man

And now his way of life is being eradicated in the cold modern breeze

Sadness truly filled my heart and my soul

As I wandered an old country lane yesterday

A building that had stood here since my childhood

Had suddenly vanished – it was just bulldozed away

©2006, Mr. Ed