Three in a Row

 

 Apparently the owner was having a yard sale the second time I photographed this barn. When I first found it, there was a row of smaller sheds built onto the left side of the barn which made the sign a little more difficult to see. 

Canon EOS A2, 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 EF lens, Fujichrome RDP100 film

 

When working on the book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era, a box of age-yellowed file cards was my guidebook to finding the old barns with "See Rock City" signs. The very cards that once were used by Clark Byers and his crew of barn painters themselves. 

When I began the project I assumed that all the barn locations were included on the cards and that there were no others. However, as I traveled around the southeast and midwest on my search, I found about 20 barns for which there were no file cards. They had been lost from Rock City's records. I called them "lost barns." 

My usual way of traveling to a barn location was that if there was an interstate that paralleled the old highway where the barn was (presumably) located, I would drive the interstate to save time, get off at the nearest exit, photograph the barn if it was still there, and get back on the interstate. 

After my Rock City Barns  book was published in 1996, I began to receive postcards and letters about other lost barns. I tracked them down and photographed them as I had opportunity. 

One afternoon as I was driving down Interstate 24 on my way home from Nashville, it occurred to me that there were stretches of highway that I might have overlooked because of getting on and off the interstate instead of driving the old roads to see what might be there. I immediately got off I-24 south of Murfreesboro, went over to U.S. Highway 41, which paralleled the interstate, and headed south. I found the first unlisted barn in less than a mile. And not only that -- it was one of the very rare barns with the message "T'would be a Pity to Miss Rock City."   

 And then I found another one a half-mile or so south of that, both on the left side of 41. 

If I had been watching carefully I would have found a third barn just another half-mile south, but on the right side of the road. As it was, I didn't learn of it until years later, when Brent Moore, who has interesting blogs at http://seemidtn.blogspot.com/ (See Middle Tennessee), and http://see-rock-city.blogspot.com/ (See Rock City), told me about it. I photographed it in 2014 and again in 2019. As you can see, it deteriorated considerably in five years. 

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(Photographs copyright David B. Jenkins 2020)

Soli Gloria Deo

To the glory of God alone