Monday, July 16, 2012

Crafty Son of a Gun, the Series

By popular, or at least duo demand, I present...the BARn that Hick Built. Along with his two older boys, when they were 11 and 13, too young to be very afraid when he put them up top, screwing sheet metal to the roof trusses.

Here's the exterior, from a while back, now missing the basketball goal and the disembodied truck bed, but retaining the burn pile out front. Also, there is now a garage-type door without flea market license plates.


Of course, every BARn worth its name has a bar. This is on the second level, which has also been revamped. But around these parts, we live in the past, and seldom update our picture library. If you look closely, you will see what Jeff Foxworthy refers to as the working TV on top of the nonworking TV. It's for tapes and DVDs only. No reception in the BARn.


Some of Hick's collector memorabilia is housed in his BARn loft. The John Deere family, for instance. If I could hire the esteemed Ms. Dolly Parton to operate a theme park called Hick's BARnland Adventures, I'm sure she would wow the crowd with her homespun wisdom. Such as, "It takes a lot of money to make a fan look this filthy."


The latest addition is the Coca Cola booth. Handcrafted by Hick. Mind your butts and wear brand-new overalls or Levis 501 jeans before they've been washed. Or else you might be spendin' a night splinter-pickin' your nether regions.


That's all I've got for now. Like I said, the Ol' Red BARn, she ain't what she used to be. Some so-called improvements have been made. But this will give you a general idea of how things operate here at Hick's BARnland Adventures.

The lower level is off limits, due to possible scouts from Hoarding: Buried Alive, trolling Blogland for a new season. Don't think Hick stacks hay in there. It's like a discarded tool wonderland. Hick never met a tool he didn't like.

He's a crafty son-of-a-gun. Maybe he can pitch that as a TV series. Crafty Son-of-a-Gun: One Man Making Treasures Out of Another Man's Trash.

8 comments:

  1. I like the Coca Cola booth. Did he make it out of old pallets? He resouceful, your Hick. I bet my barn has more non functional tools than yours! He who has been taking apart the tractor for months now. It is sitting outside the barn for all to see and ponder. He changes the oil in all the eqipment around here. The hazardous waste is in various buckets that once contained chlorine. I suppose I should just be thankful he didn't just let it run out on the ground .....

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  2. My Dad always said that you needed a house to live in and to keep your "stuff" in. My Mother most often was found upstairs and Dad was in the basement in "his room". Then they moved across country and he built an entire separate house out back away from my Mother.

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  3. I think I understand why you didn't take any close-ups of Hick's extra-special treasures...Either you are trying to protect Hick's priceless doo-dads from poachers or you're trying to tease us...later on, you'll let it out that close-ups and in-depth stories will come later--in a later episode.

    Which is it?

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  4. Love-love-love the Coca Cola booth. Is he taking orders?

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  5. I'd like to book my next vacation in your barn. It looks like a great place to sip cider and pass time telling tall tales.

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  6. That is one cool Man Cave. The checkered floor and the bucket collection over the bar really caught my eye.

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  7. Hick has really raised the BARn when it comes to man caves! That's a regular condoMANium. I too have the urge to order Coke from that booth!

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  8. Kathy,
    That may very well be pallet wood sanded clean. Or it may be expensive cuts that he scammed from my tightly-purse-stringed money two boards at a time. He has built two sheds completely out of pallet wood, complete with workbenches to hold seldom-used machines, such as one of every type of saw ever invented.

    Hick drained the coolant out of the fifth-wheel camper directly onto the ground. Right above our well. I'm sure it was purely coincidence that within two days, our water took on a sulfurous smell and taste. I know it takes a long time for liquid to percolate through the soil and clean itself.

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    knancy,
    I am most often found in the basement. I rule the netherworld, while Hick reigns over the upstairs, the BARn, his cabin, the outbuildings to his cabin, the goat house, the chicken coops, the rabbit hutch, and the garage.

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    Sioux,
    Hick took the pictures. Thus the lack of close-ups. Good thing, too. Every picture tells a story. I don't need to give myself a case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

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    Linda,
    Hick is really not very good at taking orders.

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    Stephen,
    You got the tall tales part right. Hick is a people person. He likes nothing better than to lure in some fresh meat and regale them with his exploits. We are well-suited in that way, much like Jack Sprat and his non-lean-eating wife. Hick loves to talk, and I prefer to let him. I'm a background kind of gal.

    As for sipping, it wouldn't be cider in Hick's BARn. Wild Turkey, maybe. Or moonshine from North Carolina. Or apfelkorn from his trip to Germany. Or Milwaukee's Best if he's in a money-saving mode, Michelob Dry if they still made it and a beer-distributor acquaintance gave it to him as a freebee. Not that he's an alcoholic or anything. He probably has some original Michelob Dry stashed away somewhere.

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    Leenie,
    The tile came from odd or open boxes at Hood's, a poor man's Lowe's. The buckets started with my own college St. Louis Strassenfest beer bucket collection. Once he saw them, Hick said he knew just where to display them. Then he picked up more here and there in his flea-marketing and thrift-storing excursions.

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    Tammy,
    It can double as Hick's apartMENt if I kick him out for a few days. He has installed a bathroom since that picture. I'm thinking Hick found a way to subliminally restore the former key ingredient in COKE with his photo. Any time people see it, they ask for a Coke.

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