| SENSE OF PLACE |
THE ROPE SWING by David J. Haberman
C
ady turned away from the boarded-up homestead at the far end of the property and faced the small wooden granary. She glanced at the misaligned square caps resting on the roof, hammered tins settled too far from their only task of
keeping rain from the loading chutes. A wooden ladder falling parallel to the fading tilt of the sliding front door, nearly made it from eave to earth but for the missing two bottom rungs. Twenty feet to one side a skeleton of wire rose from a circular slab of crumbling concrete, the wind whistling its ribcage. Jay defined this extinct breed of architecture as a corncrib. Only a few remained near Bushel. The rest had been snapped up over decades, migrating to dairy country to be filled with field corn. The free flow of air between ears keeps the kernels dry and free of rot, fit for shelling all winter for use as a feed additive. She noticed a scattering of naked cobs peppering the grass—escapees from use as field mulch, fuel, or employed to a rougher task. She remembered the rise in Jay’s eyebrow as he gestured toward the dilapidated outhouse.
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