- The Bard-Heim Barn, 1939
We’ve been invited to a Halloween party here in Oysterville and so it seems natural that my thoughts should turn to ghosts. We have several of the ‘normal’ (or is that paranormal?) kind of ghosts here in the village, but I’m thinking more about the missing buildings which still loom on our landscape, just out of sight. They are the missing parts of our daily lives that seem to fade from memory all too quickly.
The structure I miss most is the big barn that stood at the end of town, marking the northern boundary of the village. It was ‘always’ there and, even as it stood decaying and unused in the 1970s and 1980s, it never occurred to me that it would totally disappear. But it did and, unlike gravestones in the cemetery that honor people of the past, there is no plaque or marker commemorating the barn. Only those of us who knew it remember and miss it these days.
The barn was built in the early 1930s by a man named Dr. Bard who came from the Midwest. My mother remembered that it was designed by shipwrights and, during its construction, no local roofers would agree to work on it because it was so high. Workers had to be “imported” from Aberdeen. As far as I know, the first occupants of the property were Martin Olson and his family. Martin’s son, Tommy, wrote in a story for the Sou’wester magazine: The summer of 1935… my father rented the Bard Heim Dairy and the bay acreage north of Oysterville. At this time Dad had 85 cattle and 3 horses.
The Olson moved to Alaska during World War Two to homestead in the Matanuska Valley and, by the late 1940s, the barn was no longer being used for cattle. Oysterman and ex-prize fighter Pierre Cooper fixed up a boxing ring in the barn loft and began a boxing club for the boys of Oysterville. Occasionally, the village had a barn dance in the building. But it was never again used for its original purpose.
In the late 1980s the barn went up for auction by the county for back taxes. The buyers were from Seattle and had big ideas about saving the barn and building a house within its walls. They even presented their plan to the Oysterville Design Review Board. But the barn was rapidly deteriorating. The young Frenchman hired by the new owners to save the building made little progress with the ‘barn spirits’ he painted on two-by-fours to prop up the massive, broken beams of the roof.
Eventually, a winter storm took down the barn. All of Oysterville mourned. And, those of us who remember still feel its presence standing sentinel north of town. It’s a bittersweet memory of what could have and should have been — one of the ghosts of the village.
My middle son was around 11 when my father drove him around Vancouver, WA, pointing out what “used to be there” here and there for he had spent the latter half of his teenage years there before joining the Navy, never to live fulltime in Vancouver again. As a child, and maybe even as a 30 something, he could not understand how places from our past whisper to us as we pass, even when they are no more. And when those of us left to remember are gone they will cease to exist except perhaps in photo albums that may end up in a thrift store. Thank you for taking me back, Sydney.
I loved that barn, too, Sydney. It was directly across the street from our house. I wish I hadn’t taken it for granted that it would always be there and had taken the time to appreciate it more. I remember several families who lived there after the Olson’s left for Alaska but the only ones I know who actually used the barn were the Figgs. Claude Figg was a true farmer but they weren’t there long and moved to South Bend. His daughter, Darlene Sue was a good friend of mine but we lost track of each other. Another building I miss is the Community Hall on the corner across from the Stoner’s house. It was ghostly, too. Do you have some good stories about it?
Thanks for reminding me about the Figgs. I think I was too young to have them make a big impression on me. The Olsons, on the other hand, were lifetime family friends. I even went up to Alaska with Edith in 1980 so she could show me where she and Martin had homesteaded. She took me to her beloved library that she had started (and that she wrote about in her book “The Library and I”) and her son, Tommy (who was one of the early bush pilots up there) flew me up into the Arctic Circle so I could dip my toes into the Arctic Ocean — a guarantee that I would be back. But that’s another story…
And, yes, I do have a few stories about the old Community Hall. Do you?
So true Sydney. Nice article.
Sydney, was this on Oysterville road, the barn? What year did the wind take it down?