A scene from the Wizard of Oz

Last Wednesdays straight line winds were a force to be reckoned with.

Tree limbs that the ice storm had weakened were snapped in two and left my father-in-law’s yard looking like a war zone.

When the five minute storm finally passed over, I heard the news announce that their was roof debris out in the middle of the road on Crowe Ridge in Winchester.

Well, seeming as we weren’t home, I grab Timmy up by the sleeve of his jacket and told him that we needed to go and make sure it wasn’t our roof.

As we rounded the curve we could see that our roof was still intact ( I sighed a breath of relief), but there was something just up the road that didn’t seem right.

As we drove on up past our house there it was.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of strange things in my life, but I have never come across something so sad yet so bizarre at the same time. It was like a scene from the Wizard of Oz.

Smack dab in the middle of the road was our neighbor’s barn. No, I’m not kidding.

The barn, which once rested on the top of the ridge next to the road, had been shifted by the wind and was now leaning in the middle of the road.

There was no way anyone could get through. It didn’t take long for all of our neighbors to join together to help this family out.

As the men dug through the fallen debris, the rest of us loaded crates and farm equipment into trucks or inside of a horse trailer.

Hay was stored in a near by barn and the county was called in to move the mess out of the road.

As all of our small community stood there silently watching as a front end loader pushed the barn over, a song came to mind.

“Treat your neighbor like your brother, treat your brother like a friend, always turn the other cheek, help the weary and the weak.”

And that my friends, is what we did that day.

We all joined together to help out one family in need.

That’s what friends, and neighbors, are for.

Column was published February 19, 2009 in the Citizen Voice & Times