Most of us have special places tucked in remote corners of our minds, places we return to when moments of nostalgia or need-to-escape settle on us. I often mentally reverse decades, and return to the old prairie farm, and enter my favourite play place – the machine shed.
We called that 60- by 20-foot structure a machine shed, but Ontario farmers call them drive sheds. It stood on the western edge of the farmyard, its back to the prevailing wind. Huge sliding doors completely covered the side facing into the yard, giving access to farm machinery, though it rarely sheltered machinery during our tenure there. I recall it as a play area, but it also brings back unhappy memories. A person standing in the space between the north end of the shed and the chicken house got an excellent view of the western sky.
Any family member who heard the approaching wind or noted a darkening of the western sky, would think “dust storm” and rush to this place for a better view. If we saw an earth-bound black cloud rolling toward us and heard a distinctive high-pitched whistle, we would scream “dust storm” and race for our appointed duties. I hurriedly closed up the chicken house while my brother secured the huge doors of the machine shed, and mother took care of the windows and doors of the house.
A dust storm often brought darkness. One day mother gathered us about her and stood at the kitchen window ready to rush to the basement should the house begin to move. Through the gloom, we watched a wooden gate tear in two and the machine shed move six feet off its foundation – but the house held firm. Happier days saw the machine shed as a playground – and I recall most days back then as happy. In the earlier years a threshing machine occupied one end of the shed. By opening up some of the service hatches, I could crawl inside. It made a perfect hiding place. When dad stored it there, he had removed all the external drive belts, so my brother would turn the pulley wheels and make parts of the internal mechanism move. Fortunately, he never tried that with me inside the machine.
In winter, we could escape most extreme weather by retreating to the shed. In summer, it protected us from the sun. After the removal of the thrashing machine, abandoned tools and broken pieces of machinery often doubled as playthings. One inch of dust covered the dirt floor. With a hoe or board we would scrape roads and airports into the dust and populate them with toy cars and airplanes. During the war years we thought of aircraft as machines of war. I would nail a slat across a tall tin can, creating a crude, tailless airplane. Next, I’d fill the can with the dust from the floor, step outside, and hurl my creation into the air. It would then spiral down with black grime pouring like smoke from it’s tailless end and crash in a cloud of dust. We imagined ourselves on a battlefield watching enemy aircraft burning and crashing.
In this age, the news brings stories of death, destruction, and predictions of imminent economic collapse. So I guess we all need places to escape, if only in our minds. It might not keep us physically or financially safe, but it helps us remain mentally balanced.