My Grandfather's Old Barn

What a treasure of a picture I discovered Thanksgiving day. Going through family picture albums with my older brother we came across so many pictures we'd never seen before. We had an aunt who organized family pictures by year and by family. Behind many of the photos were the negatives. I can't imagine how long it took her to do this but I am thankful she did.

The first photo I would like to share is this amazing photo of my grandfather's barn. This is the barn I went back to in my memory several times when writing, "The Reindeer Keeper." My cousins and I spent countless hours playing and pretending in this massive structure with two haylofts connected by an old plank bridge and empty stanchios and empty chicken roosts. But empty didn't matter to us. In our imaginations they were sometimes occupied. In our imaginations that old barn was one great adventure after another. Despite the snow and rain creeping in between the cracks, we stayed inside that barn-and waited for the next stagecoach or hid from younger family members or dashed from one haymow to the other in hot pursuit of evil creatures.

That weathered old barn was our Disney World and our Great Adventure and Smithsonian every time we stepped inside. And when I sat down to write "The Reindeer Keeper" that barn with its creaks and smells and fascination became the focal point to a story I felt brewing inside me about bringing adults back to that wondrous feeling of truly believing in the Spirit of Christmas.

Family photo albums are a family's history. They link generations, telling them about those who came before them and about special times and places-like an old barn now gone except for its silo.