Barn Raising Anyone?

As we drive up and down the winding country roads that characterize our beautiful Town, we realize that we are losing something with every passing day. We may be remaining rural, but we are becoming less and less a farm community. Sometimes, the former farms we pass may not even look like what they once were. The lands which once grew grains and vegetables have been subdivided and now grow the next generation of our neighbors in the houses built there, houses teeming now with life and joy.

Some, however, still have old barns on them. A very few of these barns are still in use after a century or more - still housing cows or horses or bales of hay. These old barns, working or not, are far more a symbol of our historical heritage than the old stone houses scattered around Town. Don't get me wrong, I find the old homes beautiful and I am amazed when I hear that the families living in them are four, five generations or more removed from those who built them, their many times great grandparents.

A barn, on the other hand... Well, a barn is something special. It is a symbol of the values which made our Town what it was for three centuries. Few of us give any thought to how barns were constructed in the old days, days before electricity and gasoline and machines to make heavy work light.

America - and especially Towns like ours - was built through the tradition of "barn raising". Wikipedia defines barn raising as "an event during which a community comes together to assemble a barn for one or more of its households, particularly in 18th- and 19th-century rural North America." That's a rather dry description for something that was an astounding example of all that is good and noble about America.

Neighbors would gather in the early morning hours to begin work on a building that would take form before their very eyes, rising almost magically from the ground up. Dozens, sometimes hundreds of people would each take on a role, whether it was sawing or hammering, pulling on ropes in unison to lift heavy beams 20, 30 feet in the air, wives and children cooking, making lemonade, bringing sustenance to those whose muscles were reaching the breaking point. The community was a family, the Town a tapestry of people instead of threads, all working as one towards a common goal.

As unimaginable the efforts they made is to us today, what is even more incredible is the fact that no one was paid for this, not in money. They all knew that their neighbors had either helped them raise a barn in the past or they would sometime soon. No books were kept, people were not made to feel as if they owed a debt. The debt was kept track of in each person's conscience.

Imagine a Town where there were no Comprehensive Plans, no Zoning Codes, no Code Enforcement Officer. Imagine a State that had never heard of Environmental Impact Statements or Wetlands which have no water. Imagine a community where your neighbors came to help when you were building something rather than complain about their "viewshed". Imagine a world where the only time anyone got involved in another's personal affairs or in what they did with their private property was when they came to help rather than criticize.

That was America more than a century ago. Today, busybodies are the norm rather than the exception. Today, instead of the tension of muscles pulling on ropes, we have the tension instilled in our souls by those who care only for themselves. Today, we are told over and over again that we cannot do for ourselves, that the only way we can get what we need is if Government reaches into someone's pocket and uses the money it finds to do everything for us. Today, we are no longer free because we are denied the freedom to do for ourselves and for one another.

What America needs, what the Town of Rochester is crying out for, is a modern day barn raising. We need to help ourselves. We need to do for our neighbors. We need to re-form the bonds of community and family that made us strong and great and proud and free. When we do that, when we turn to one another for what the community needs and simply do it, we make the rules of Government irrelevant. We return it to its original role - to do those very few things which cannot be done by individuals, things like schools and roads and law enforcement. Everything else we can accomplish better, faster, at less cost and with far greater pride than the High Priests of Big Government could ever dream of.

No, we're not talking about literally building brand new barns, but there are dozens of things which we can do together, things more appropriate to the times in which we live. The only limits on what we can achieve are our imaginations and our collective will to act and excel.

Let's dare to dream, dare to imagine, dare to build and accomplish! We are the Town. We are the Community. We can be a great, extended family once again.

The nails and wood are there, the hammers and saws eager to do their work, the ropes waiting for strong hands to pull them taut. All that is missing is us.

What do you say?