The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [123]
From a distance, this barn has some resemblance to the Ingledew dogtrot, which might possibly have inspired it, but that building was not cantilevered. The “dogtrot” here is a horsetrot, or rather a horsewalk, high enough for a wagonload of hay to be pulled into it and transferred to the lofts of the two cribs, yes, two, bigeminal not necessarily as male and female, although it was not merely coincidence that all of the cows kept in the left crib happened to be females while all of the horses stabled in the right crib were males. According to family tradition, quite possibly apocryphal, there was one of the horses, once upon a time, who carried on a sustained affair with one of the cows. Who told Denton and Monroe about bigeminality? Their grandfather, Jacob? I doubt it. Man naturally knows how to build good and true buildings, honest and unselfconscious. Or perhaps there is a Grand Architect of the Universe, after all.
But what does this barn have to do with Eli Willard’s horseless carriage? Well, on a more practical level, it was the place where he parked the carriage during a sudden heavy rainstorm, because the carriage, an early Oldsmobile, had no top—and thus converting the barn temporarily into Stay More’s first garage. On a heavy-handed symbolic level, the barn is the most pastoral of structures, and the coming of the automobile signaled the decline of the pastoral age. Indeed, when Eli Willard drove into the barn between the two cribs for horses and cows, the horses reared up whinnying and snorting and broke the gates of their stalls, and the cows gave sour milk for a week afterwards. But this reaction was as nothing compared with the first appearance of his automobile in the center of town, where tethered horses broke their reins and ran away, horses and mules hitched to wagons stampeded, all of the dogs of Stay More howled until they were hoarse, children screamed, women fainted, and the brass clock, which Eli Willard had sold sixty-odd years before, said PRONG.
Eli Willard must have been in his eighties now; a man of that age would be denied a driver’s license today, but he still had two good eyes and two good ears and a strong pair of hands to hold the wheel with which he steered the machine. He came to a stop in front of the Ingledew General Merchandise Store, and everybody who had not fainted or was not tending to those who had, crowded into the road, keeping a safe distance from the vehicle, except for the bravest of the Ingledews, Swains, Plowrights, Coes, Dinsmores, Chisms, Duckworths and Whitters, one man of each, who approached the machine warily after Eli Willard had cut off its engine, and who got down on their knees and stuck their heads under it to see how it was put together. Eli Willard gave a squeeze to a large rubber bulb attached to a brass horn pointing downward, and the resultant sound produced eight bruised heads, one each to an Ingledew, Swain, Plowright, Coe, Dinsmore, Chism, Duckworth and Whitter. Each of them rose and shouted his favorite epithet at Eli Willard.
“Sorry, gentlemen,” said the octogenarian from Connecticut. “I couldn’t resist. Where I come from, it is considered the height of rudeness to examine the mechanisms of another’s motorcar.”
“Gawdeverallmighty!” exclaimed a Swain, “hit aint a man nor a beast, hit’s a thang!”
“Whatever on earth is the world a-comin to?” asked a Dinsmore.
“Hit aint even got a bridle on it!” observed a Coe.
“Is that all of it?” wondered a Plowright. “Aint there any more to it?”
“Lookit them thar tars,” said a Chism, and kicked one. “Rubber tars! What’s inside ’em? Straw?”
“Air,” said Eli Willard.
“Air!” exclaimed all eight of them incredulously, and one demanded, “How d’ye git the air in ’em?”
Eli Willard demonstrated