By Sean Prpick
Special to The Leader

BLADWORTH — It shouldn’t have been, but it still was a shock when my cousin Heidi Prpick Schneider copied me on a mass family Facebook message at the end of July.

Heidi apologized for the short notice, but explained that an important piece of our past was going up in flames. And if we wanted to see the last of the Prpick family barn, now more than a century old and dilapidated, we should come out the following day.

Heidi told us we could expect a big barn burning — or “Barn Razing,” as I quickly dubbed it — since it was to be destroyed by fire on July 29.

Other family members did me one better, however, and called the “Barn Blazing.”

Everybody who was CC’d on this message had their own memories of the old barn.

In my own case, the barn was there literally for as long as I remember. When I was born in 1958, my parents Joe and Sharon Prpick brought me to the farm a few miles north of Bladworth, which is operated now by my aunt Janet and her sons Barkley and Jason.

I recall being very small and chasing barn cats around on the main floor, climbing up the ladder to the hayloft which looked so vast and spooky, my dad harnessing up our Clydesdales in the stalls on cold winter days, and more.

We left the farm when I was about five and moved to a new one a few miles away.

Not long after that, my uncle Jim Prpick married my aunt Janet and took over the old homestead and raised four kids, including the two boys and their younger sisters Heidi and Brandi.

The barn remained a central part of their lives.

For the full story, please see the Aug. 15 edition of The Davidson Leader or call 306-567-2047 to subscribe today.