I stood on what I prayed was a solid beam in the dusty half-darkness of the old barn, my left arm clenched around a post while my right arm held a five-pound lard bucket of salt. Mud-daubers buzzed around me as I looked at the ground twenty feet below. I heard the tractor bringing in another load of hay. I would soon have to force myself to climb higher so I could throw salt on this new layer of hay.
Making hay was hard and dirty and always done in the hottest part of the day in the hottest part of the year. Tractors had replaced horses and mules, but otherwise the work was unchanged for the hundred summers our farm had been there.
The hay was brought from the field to a mound at the end of the barn. There it was picked up by the hay fork, a double set of four-foot-long curved steel tines hinged in the middle like a giant claw. The fork was lowered to the hay, where two men clambered over the haystack to position it to pick up as much hay as possible. When the fork was set, the spotter signaled the driver of the Farmall Cub tractor at the other end of the barn.
The little Farmall pulled the fork and its load back up, then along the rail through the top of the barn. Just before the fork reached the bent where the hay was supposed to go the spotter jerked the trip rope. If he jerked the rope with exactly the right touch at exactly the right time the fork opened and spilled the hay into place. The Farmall reversed, the fork was pulled back out to the haystack, and the ritual repeated until the hay or the daylight ran out.
One batch of hay had been rained on and wasn’t completely dry, but my grandfather decided we needed to put it in the barn before another rain caught it. When the hay was wet, we spread salt on it as we put it in the barn to absorb the moisture and prevent fermentation; otherwise, the hay could mold or even smolder and burn. He looked at me. “Reckon you can climb up there and throw salt?” I nodded my head. “I think so.” Since I didn’t have any other jobs, I was now the salter.
From my perch up in the barn I could hear the crew on the ground, three brothers from the tenant family on the farm. There was always joking and teasing. I envied their horseplay. They’d rag on someone’s car or girlfriend or argue about who was doing most of the work.
When I climbed down to get more salt, I walked around to the end of the barn to see the guys. They had all walked the gravel road into town last weekend to see an Elvis movie and were talking about his karate moves. The youngest, Martin, said “I’ll bet I could do karate” and yelled something he thought sounded Japanese as he tried to replicate Elvis’s moves.
Dave held up a board. “Hey, Pelvis, let’s see you break this board with your hand. Looks pretty rotten, should be easy for an expert like you.”
Martin responded, “How about I break it over your head?”
“Be careful now, big boy, Elvis ain’t gonna come running to help you!”
As the discussion continued, John said to me “That Miller boy said they taught him some karate in the Army. I think if the Army gave me a gun, I’d just use that.” I agreed that made sense, then we were interrupted by the approach of a load of hay.
I longed to be part of the crew, part of the horseplay, one of the guys. I liked hanging around and listening to them talk about cars, knives, horses, guns, and of course, girls. There were a lot of things that I didn’t quite understand, especially about girls, but I pretended to know. I wanted to be part of the joking around. More importantly, I wanted to be respected as a good worker, even though at nine years old I wasn’t good for much of anything except carrying water, running errands, and maybe throwing salt, although that remained to be seen.
Salting was easy at the start of the summer when the hay in the barn was low, but as summer progressed the hay in the bent would get taller and I would have to climb higher in the barn than I had been before. Heights scared me, but none as badly as the top of the barn.
Our barn was over a hundred years old. Its hewn oak posts were bent from the weight of years of crops and the force of the wind. The cross beams were notched and attached to the posts by large bolts or wooden pegs. The barn seemed alive sometimes, as it creaked and complained in the wind and loose pieces of tin roofing flapped.
The loose hay was stored in the central, highest section of the barn and burley tobacco was hung to cure on both sides. The sticks of tobacco were hung on tier poles, six-inch hickory or poplar logs in tiers spaced about five feet apart vertically. I had to stand on the tier poles to throw salt on the hay. They weren’t nailed down and sometimes rolled under my feet. Most were old and it was easy to imagine them breaking without warning. I did the math; each tier I climbed meant another five feet to fall, plus the twelve feet to the first tier, and it was seven tiers to the top.
The day I had been fearing came in August after thundershowers had caught the hay in the fields. I climbed nervously from tier pole to tier pole through the cobwebs and dust to my unsteady perch and tried to brace myself in a secure position. I could look out at the fields through gaps in the barn siding and see the buck rake bringing in the first load of hay.
I heard the fork being loaded and the signal to haul it up. The gears of the little Farmall tractor whined as it strained to lift the fork load of hay up to the track. The fork rumbled toward me, louder and louder, until the sudden sharp click of the fork release and the whoompf as the hay tumbled into place. I shut my mouth and eyes tight against the dust and bits of hay that engulfed me and threw timid handfuls of salt toward the hay. The fork rolled back along the track for its next load.
I held on desperately as each fork load came in, imagining what would happen if the fork came off the track or a tier pole came loose or if the barn’s old timbers finally had one load of hay too many. I tried to stay low and throw the salt high, but I knew it wasn’t good enough. My grandmother had told me about being awakened one night to watch the neighbor’s barn burn with a whole summer’s crops inside. What if it were our barn, and my fault it caught fire? I knew I should climb higher and throw more salt, but the higher I climbed the greater the dangers seemed—the hay was certain to knock me loose, the tier poles were older and weaker, there were more chances for my hand or foot to slip—but I also knew I was letting the crew down by not doing my job well. How could I ever be one of them? How could I even drink out of their water jar?
When I climbed down to refill my salt bucket, the guys would ask how it was going, and I’d just reply “Fine.” I wasn’t going to tell them how hard it was to make myself climb back up or how I was afraid I wasn’t spreading the salt well enough.
The hay kept coming as I hung there, stuck between fear and conscience. I forced myself to keep climbing and throwing the salt, afraid to climb higher in the barn but also afraid of not doing my job.
The day went on. The barn didn’t collapse. The tier poles didn’t break. I didn’t fall. Each fork load of hay and handful of salt gave me a little more confidence. My desperate grip on the tier poles loosened and the handfuls of salt were bigger and better distributed. The climb down to get more salt and then back up to my perch took less time. At some point, I realized I wasn’t scared anymore. I could do my job.
The confidence was a new feeling for me. I could make it to the top in a quick continuous climb and hold on with one hand while flinging salt with the other. I felt like one of the crew, not just a little kid tagging along. I drank water from the shared jar and laughed at the dirty jokes like I knew what they were about.
At the end of the day, I walked up the hill to the house with the crew, proud that I was as sweaty and dirty as any of them, and told my grandmother “We put in a good day.” She sent me inside for a bath.
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Chris McGlone has an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from George Mason University and a Ph.D. in photogrammetry from Purdue University. His creative work has appeared in “The Nasiona,” “Floyd County Moonshine,” “Still,” and “Quibble,” and is available at ww.chrismcglone.com. In his pre-retirement life, he published technical papers, book chapters and a textbook. Originally from eastern Kentucky, he enjoys playing Irish guitar and bluegrass banjo.
© 2025, Chris McGlone
Halfway Down the Stairs 