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A Mail Pouch barn, slated for demolition, becomes the latest acquisition.
Hunsinger hadn’t seen the barn yet, and I had explained my concerns. I asked him to advise us if we would need to stabilize the barn’s structures before removing the siding. The last thing I wanted was for the barn to collapse when we were in it. So, I loaded tie-down straps and 2 3 6s/2 3 4s onto my trailer if the situation called for such engineering.
Monday morning, a museum-crew caravan drove the 100 miles to Lanesville, which is just south of I-64 and roughly 30 miles west of Louisville. Riding with me was my girlfriend, Barbara Marrow, from Washington, DC, who had flown in just for the project. Behind us were the museum’s display builder, Sean Druley, and his buddy, Chris “Snappy” Vorhees, who had loaded Sean’s van with power tools and a generator. Behind them was Jennifer Miles, art director at ST Media Group and the project’s unofficial photographer and videographer.
When our group arrived, we found Warrick already there, and Hunsinger and Porter, who had set out much earlier to make the 150-mile drive from their homes in central Indiana.
As it turned out, the postponement was fortunate because the weather was low 60s and blue skies: Not bad for late October! More fortuitously, Hunsinger looked the barn over and assured us it wasn’t going anywhere. The late-1800s structure comprised hardwood beams, he told us, and had been mortised-and-tenoned together with wood pegs. After a brief strategy session, we all set to work.
The 50-ft.-long barn had been built into the hillside, with the Mail Pouch side facing downhill. We planned to remove the vertical boards from the inside of the barn, working on ladders at floor level, and then lower them one by one to waiting crew members below. Each board was consecutively numbered from inside the barn to facilitate re-assembly at a later date.
The barn originally had sliding doors, so the exterior track railing had to be removed first. Fortunately, we had brought an oversized ladder. Also, we removed intact a hayloft hinged door, on which the bottom corners of the “O” and “U” in “MAILPOUCH” were painted.
Fortunately, the only hitch to the project, the severely weathered boards below floor level, didn’t affect any of the painted Mail Pouch copy. We snapped a line and cut off the rotted wood, leaving a 13-ft. 8-in. consistent height.
We began removal around 10 a.m., and finished by 4 p.m., including the loading of the individual boards in numerical order on the museum’s 16-ft. flatbed trailer.
The project seemed pre-ordained. The story ended up on the Associated Press wire, as well as on the cover of Antique Trader. But the final chapter won’t be written until we re-assemble the 50-ft.-long Mail Pouch ad on the wall of the signpainting-themed area of the museum’s new home. Stay tuned.
