“Some wondrous things have happened along the way, as the thunderstorms of summer and the deep snows of winter came over that mountain back there. When he laid eyes on me, I became one of his barn logs and that became my lucky day, because within a few short years, a blight killed every chestnut tree still standing in the land.”
“As the years rolled by, I grew tall and survived everything Mother Nature threw my way until around 1900, when the land owner (Jim Smith, by name) came into the woods hunting trees to build himself a barn. Come late summer, I had grown into a chestnut, fell from the tree, rolled downhill and hid under some fallen leaves until spring, when (wonder of wonders) I sprouted and became a chestnut tree.” I go back to a time before our country’s Civil War, when one long ago spring, I came into being as a bloom high in a hillside tree. I’m one of the 40 logs that make up the walls of this old log barn you’re looking at. “Hello there, stranger, why don’t you pull up a chair and let me tell you a story. It has seen good times, bad times and times in-between and if those old log walls could talk, what stories they could tell. It saw both world wars, jet planes and television come on the scene and it was there when men walked on the moon. It was there when the Wright Brothers flew Kitty Hawk and when Lindberg flew the Atlantic. If you have a submission for Reader Diary, email it to John Peters at still stands today on Pine Ridge Road in Surry County a quarter mile south of the Virginia state line an ancient barn made entirely of chestnut logs. Editor’s Note: Reader Diary is a periodic column written by local residents, Surry County natives, and readers of The Mount Airy News.
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