To this day, I can remember the smell of that old barn. It was a deep musty, slightly spicy-piney smell. Sort of a cross between a damp old cellar, and a can of pine-scented air freshener.
The big green and white barn complex was built in the Victorian era, part of the vast Sage family estate in my village--Russell Sage being a prominent American industrialist, way back then. He's got a women's college named after him, in Troy, NY.
Anyway, the old barn was not your typical American barn. this one had a long shed row, with stalls for the draft horses and polo ponies. (Carriage horses were kept at the carriage house, which was further away, adjacent to the "field next door" to our house.) There were also about a half-dozen cattle stanctions in there, as well. There was a garage, next to the stables, with an overhead apartment above, that had a wide outdoor porch on the roof of the garage. Attacted to this was the "water tower." The water tower was a two story "tower," that had a well with a trap door below, and a set of stairs which led to a mysterious small upstairs room--what that room was for, us kids had our speculations about, but I'm sure the true reason was much more mundane than our thoughts conjured up.
Attatched to the water tower was a big granary building--scary to go in, because it had an elevated wood floor, that was raised a few feet above the door--with a deep and dark cellar, below. One slip----.
I walked by this spot all the time, with the dogs. Us kids used to sneak into these places, from time to time--but quite honestly, we found them a bit scary, even the bravest of us (and I was scared--the first time I climbed the stairs to the tower's "mystery room," marked the very first time my knees actually shook. I think I was about 10 or 11, back then.
As a pre-teen, I used to daydream that this was my stables, and all the fields were where I kept my horses. Interestingly enough--this barn was painted in the same colors as the stables at famous Saratoga Race Course (the thoroughbred track, not the harness track), and I often wondered if that was deliberate, or just coincidence. But knowing how posh Saratoga was/is, I lean towards the deliberate.
As a teen, I used to daydream of winning the lottery, and buying the old barn and surrounding fields, and turning it in to a horse farm. Silly, huh?
The old barn's gone now. Torn down in the mid-1980's...but I swear, I can still smell that musty-pine scented odour.
THE OLD BARN, AND MY DOGS, HAPPY AND SHAMROCK. PROBABLY 1976 OR 77.
