Burying the Family Farm

© Jim Korpi

Imagine if you can a barn to the left of this photograph. Imagine another barn to the far right just before the black fencing. In front of the barns is a large dirt driveway where a bunch of long-haired men and woman in cut-off jean shorts play a game of barnyard baseball with make-shift plates. This is the image burned in my head when I look back at my mother’s family farm. It’s a scene in an aging photograph my Mom has in one of her photo albums.
After burying my grandmother in the plot beside my grandfather, we drove across the street to where the family farm resides in my memory. A picket fence lining the property blocked me from my past. A gate once stood in my place. Before trucks filled with livestock could enter the barnyard, one had to swing open the gate.
The barns are replaced by 3000 square-foot homes with giant manicured lawns and two car garages. The land has been contoured to fit its suburban mold.
It was on this day that I buried the family farm.

Posted January 12th, 2009 in Uncategorized.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous:

    Holy S! That’s the old farm! So much for dirt biking, paint balling, snow mobiling, rodeo riding, BB shooting, beating on Jim in the old barn…those days have past!

  2. david s. holloway:

    wow.
    nice to see im not alone.
    my family has a farm in oklahoma on land that my relatives got in the land rush. i spent much of my life there. when my grandmother dies, my great aunts will be selling the farm and so any historical ties my family has to land will be gone. i’ll probably live in an apartment the rest of my life.

Leave a response: