The Hay House

It was about 1957 that we finally got rid of the cows. For years my dad had 
kept cows and milked them faithfully morning and night, even sold milk for 
a while when we had two cows. Most of the rest of the time we had old Molly
and usually a calf being raised to butcher. We always had real butter,
eggs from our own chickens, and as I recall, enough to give away to my 
grandparents when they would visit every Tuesday. The milk that went sour
was fed to the chickens who were just like so many little garbage disposers.
But Grandma died and Grandpa didn't want to churn butter, and old Molly got
too old for dairying and my mother finally figured out the buying milk for
one kid was a lot cheaper than buying cow feed.

We had a bunch of hay that year and nothing to do with it, so we went down
into the field and put in two fenceposts about 6 feet tall and 8 feet apart.
Across the top we put some kind of old 2x4 we had lying around, and we found
other old 2x4s to make a frame sort of shaped like a tent, then nailed bean
poles between them. Starting at ground level, we pitched on hay just like a
thatched roof. The resulting structure was about 16 feet long and about 8
feet wide. There were no lights, of course, and no candles or any sort of
flame ever came close to this tinderbox. We kids usually had one barely 
working flashlight among us.

I was an only child, so I welcomed anything that would attract friends to our
house. On many a summer night several neighbor boys would show up with 
blankets or sleeping bags and we would trudge down to the hay house. The open
end faced east, toward town, so there was always a little bit of light. If
anyone had to go potty, he would gingerly step over the others and go out 
somewhere in the dark.

It rained on us several times, this being western Washington about 30 miles
north of Seattle. But inside the hay house we were always dry. It was built 
on a slight slope and above the high-water mark where the creek overflowed
every Spring. The climate in that area is warm in summer and cool in winter
for the most part, with only a rare day over 80 or night below 20, so the
hay house was usable for a good part of the year. We didn't like to use it
when it was raining because of the part where you had to haul your blankets
down and back and they would get rather soggy.

The cats and dogs enjoyed it whenever a group would sleep there. Usually a
couple of the cats would find a warm human to snuggle up to, and old Lad,
our collie, would "stand guard" next to the door. (Guarding against what,
we never knew. The only thing he would ever chase was a cow.)

The hay house stood for three or four years. Each Spring, I would take some
fresh hay down there to refurbish the floor thick enough to make a
comfortable sleeping area. It was like having a 10x16-foot mattress. I hate
to think of all the bugs that probably moved in there. Nowadays the dust 
alone would probably kill someone with allergies, and about half the kids
I know have allergies. (I had asthma at the time, but never in the summer
and the hay dust and pollen never affected me. Odd.)

One summer, my parents sponsored a group of Horizon Girls and they had the 
Big Adventure of "sleeping out" in the hay house. Of course, some of us boys 
had to sneak down and see what they were doing and they discovered us and 
squealed and all that sort of girly stuff. No harm done, though, everyone 
was just teasing.

Finally, my dad rented the fields to a neighbor for pasture and the cows 
trampled down the hay house. By this time, the seeds in the hay had sprouted
to young, tender grass and the temptation was just too much for a stupid cow.

After the demise of the hay house, it was largely forgotten. High-school
activities, cars and such became much more interesting and only recently have
I even thought of it again. The younger generation sits in front of the TV or
the computer and says, "Hay house? Sounds boring!" I would bet if they had
one, it would be the coolest thing in the neighborhood.

I suppose nowadays that vandals would set fire to a hay house, and you 
wouldn't dare let girls sleep out alone. What's more, the EPA would probably
post a notice that everyone had to potty in the house so the sewage would 
go through a proper septic system. As though half a dozen little boys would
have more "output" than a herd of cows....