Bert Breen's Barn Events Quotes

[Chick] and his family just scratched a living. His wife was dead, but he had five daughters and all summer he had them out picking berries or hunting ginseng while there was still a market for it....

Time came, though, he began thinking what it would be like to have real Holstein cows in a barn with a cement floor like Massey's. It started him thinking about how poor they were. He noticed the w...

[Bert Breen's barn] looked to him as sound as it must have been the day it was built, and he began thinking how it would be if he could buy it and move it down to their own place by the river below...

"Looks like your life is about to change. Looks like you're going to quit your schooling and make some money. Not a great lot of it," she added, to Tom's disappointment. She dealt out some more car...

They were silent a while, and then she said, "You sure you want to quit school?""It ain't doing me any good right now that I can see. And I want to bring us some money." (7.18-19)

"What can we get for you today, my boy?"That embarrassed Tom even more. He took his hat off, though both the men were wearing theirs. He started to clear his throat, but that turned out to be diffi...

The first day, going around with Ox, he found things confusing. It didn't seem he would ever learn which chute let down which meal or grain, and he wondered why they weren't labeled. [….]Ox made...

It was quarter to five, because he had to be at the mill at half past seven and before then he had to get the cows and help with milking, eat his breakfast, and walk the three miles to the mill. (1...

However, in a few minutes she was back, handing him a done-up package, and the strange thing to him was that she said thank you after taking so much pains to help him. So he thanked her, which seem...

"It's a good thing, giving presents for Christmas," Mr. Hook went on; but he sounded as if for him there wasn't much to it any more. Tom recalled hearing Ox say that Mr. Hook lived alone. His wife,...

He felt near helpless. The storm now had him all to itself, the way a cat has its mouse. Whichever way he moved the wind had hold of him. The thing was not to stop moving. (13.5)

[…] Tom realized, though he had never noticed before, that there were telephone lines at the top of the hill with a pole there serving the depot. Meanwhile a couple of more men came into the offi...

He knew Ox was right, saying he was at the bottom of the ladder; but in a way he wasn't, for it had occurred to him that things in his life had come to a changing point. He and Polly Ann and the gi...

"I been in this house nearly my whole life, Tom, and I'm going to stay in it. It seems sort of lonesome to you, I guess. But I've got things to think about. There ain't such a thing as an empty roo...

The Hulbert House was the biggest hotel in Boonville, where political visitors or sportsmen on their way into the woods put up. It had always looked very impressive to Tom, with its walls of gray l...

The two buildings looked just the same as when Tom had last seen them, only there was no snow; and it didn't seem as lonely with all of them climbing down from the wagons and clustering on the porc...

All of a sudden Tom realized that it might be possible for him to buy the Breen place. Three years of taxes wouldn't amount to over thirty dollars. He didn't want that land, but if he had to buy th...

During the winter he had had to help Polly Ann with medicine for the two girls when they got sick for near a month with some kind of chest complaint. He had also had to buy two work shirts and new...

Sure, I remember your grandpa, Tom. Him and me we used to go bird shooting back in those days. Like as not we had Erlo Ackerman along with us with his old orange-spot setter dog. Erlo was quite a s...

They spent a few minutes admiring [Mr. Hook's] gray horse, and Tom tried to persuade Birdy to stay to supper, but again he wouldn't. He'd had a fine dinner, but he wanted to get back. Tom knew he w...

The diagrams and drawings seemed to make reading come easier for him, and sometimes he did the lessons the girls brought home from school, while they made a game of being his room teacher. (30.1)

They would fell [a tree for a supporting post] right away so it would have plenty of time to season, and Birdy would square it himself. He had his father's broadax, which he had used some in his ti...

It's not as if it was bad news, Tom. Like for instance, you losing your job with Ackerman and Hook. That's a real thing and your idea about the barn and getting it for taxes was a dream you'd worke...

"No idea what he paid for it. It's not worth anything, so he paid too much, that's sure. You get to be a lawyer in New York City and what you spend up in this country don't mean anything to you." (...

You hadn't ought to get discouraged, Tom. Sure, it seems bigger than you thought, now you've learned what it takes to get a thing done. But, Tom, you got this idea about the Breen barn three years...

The house and Birdy's small barn were weathered. [….] The shingle roofs were patched here and there, sometimes with newer shingles, sometimes with pieces of tin. The buildings stood between two o...

They spent pretty near the whole afternoon working out how they were going do the job. Birdy suggested that the afternoons when Polly Ann was using Drew to get to and from her house jobs Tom should...

"Don't run scared, Tom. Most jobs seem a lot bigger than they are until you've got into them. Then they look a lot more possible." (38.9)

Mr. Hook asked how many sisters they had been, and she told him five, until Prinny died. Prinny'd been the prettiest, with hair silver-yellow, like ripe June grass, a baby princess for a fact. Then...

"And if Mr. Hook should ask me [to marry him], I'd say no. A person from as poor as we are has no right to marry a wealthy man like him." (41.49)

All his life Drew had objected to having to pull anything more than the lightest load and several times while Tom was piling on the boards he had craned his head around and stared with a bald accus...

[…] she had to keep on with her days of doing housework for her regular employers, as well as the one day doing washing for the men who worked at Massey's. (44.23)

[Massey] led Tom into the barn to get them, and Tom looked enviously at the two lines of big Holstein cows in their iron stanchions, standing on the concrete floor. He wouldn't be able to afford an...

The men helped themselves to stacks of sandwiches, to hunks of cheese, to cherry or blueberry or apple pie, and drank quantities of coffee and switchel. [….] They kept in separate groups, the lum...

As near as he could make out, the houses were mere shanties, all of them one-story with one or two rooms, built close to the road. Even though there were quite a lot of them, it seemed a lonely pla...

They were passing through the Irish Settlement. There were no lights at all now, except their own traveling the edge of the road as Drew pulled the wagon in a steady trot. Once a door opened—they...

Tom had never been in the bank before. [….] It gave Tom a strange sensation to think he was entering the bank to do business there, the same almost as Erlo Ackerman might do. (53.1)

Old Sol had been on his way to Forestport, having run out of gin, and the Flanchers damned near ran him and his stump-hocked little black mare into the ditch. They'd kept right on, taking the fork...

"Mr. Dolan," he said again. He seemed to have a little trouble with his throat and had to clear it. "I'm glad to have your order, Mr. Dolan. It's a worthwhile order, too. Very worthwhile, I should...

He and Tom discussed what Tom ought to do about flooring the stable. Tom wanted to lay down a cement floor, but Birdy persuaded him that that would take too long. "You ought to get your crit...

The stove was still there too, but so rusted from rain leaking down, it hardly seemed worth saving. Birdy, though, said they should take it out. You hadn't ought to throw away good iron. And anyway...

[Tom] said he wanted to start getting better cows than their little Swiss ones, and how he had to find a team of horses and a lumber wagon and some machinery."With more cows, you're going to need m...

Mr. Hook walked in and said, "Al, I've brought my friend who might be interested in buying that team."Al turned around and got out of his chair. He shook hands with Mr. Hook, who said, "This is Tom...

It wasn't her barn now. It was his—absolutely. He didn't have to go around like a low-down Dolan any more. It came suddenly into his mind that the Widow Breen had told that to him long ago. (63.31)