A Barn With Character

If you drive a few minutes north from our house up Highway 26 and look to the west, you'll see a barn with a lot of character.  I've always liked it.  Forgive my photo.  It is off-center and out of focus.  I almost missed it, but I caught enough of it to show you what I'm talking about.

The painting on the side of the barn depicts a rooster.  A very proud rooster with his head held high as he high steps with tail feathers announcing his presence to all the hens in the barnyard.  He rules over the hens.  It is his barnyard.  Behind him are the first rays of sunlight radiantly outlining the majesty of the cock of the walk. 

To me the barn painting exudes confidence and optimism.  I like our barn, I really do, but our barn is just... red.  You can see a photo of it at the top of the page.  We have several proud roosters that crow loudly to welcome the new day, but I think if I looked outside each morning and saw a rooster like this one, proudly emblazoned on the side of my barn, it would get me moving faster than a cup of black coffee.

Roosters are self-assured and assertive and they may have had something to do with Scarlett O'Hara's feisty, never quit, dogged determination at the end of "Gone With The Wind:"

“He had never known such gallantry as the gallantry of Scarlett O'Hara going forth to conquer the world in her mother's velvet curtains and the tail feathers of a rooster.” 
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

Probably there was a rooster like this painted on the side of the barn at Tara.