Today's video: off to the barns. Not this barn, though.
That's the old barn, which was actually dissolved in 1942 by a half-century's worth of accumulated urine odor. The south wing had dissolved by '39, but the rest hung on until a good stiff breeze finally took the rest away.
I don't mind the smell, really. If you're there all day I suppose you get used to it. Could be worse - there are giant fans that keep the air moving around, but the combination of the blowers, the barny acoustics and the constant peevish racket of animals could make a city-dweller mad after a few hours. The farm kids don't notice, or care. But I noticed that even the farm kids don't spend much time in the poultry barn, and for good reason. A few years ago on Art Bell show, the host played a tape of the Actual Sounds of Hell - a team of Russian spelunkers had discovered a deep fissure, and heard an unearthly din below, the sound of untold voices screaming in torment; turns out they'd discovered a passage to hell itself! Yes, really. Well, if you took that sound, sped it up and boosted the treble, you'd have the poultry barn.
