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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> >James -
> Somewhere back in my long ago (Doobie Bros.?) I have memory of those old  
> tobacco barns being re-thought as architectural icons...re-incarnated and  
> re-appreciated.
> Any truth to this rumor?

I could take a 30 minute walk with the camera and document a dozen old 
tobacco barns in this hollow.  Alas, ten years from now, not one is likely to 
be 
left standing.  Here the old tobacco barns are pole construction.   Long 
poles 
were set into the ground and the barn built on those with lots of triangles 
in 
the structure to give it rigitity.  When the poles rotted off at ground 
level, 
the barn was jacked up a bit and large stones placed below the decayed 
memebers and thus they stayed for a century or more.

Tobacco culture here is about gone (and good riddance), but it's a pity that 
there's no practical reason to preserve the old barns any longer.  And they 
are slowly falling to the ground.

Many of the barns had cow stalls and dairies on the ground level, but keeping 
dairly animals is about gone too.

Refitting tobacco barns? Not here.  Here all the arcitecture of the past two 
decades has been Early Ugly like everywhere else.    </HTML>