A Sentimental Goodbye to Glynwood Road's Big White Barn
Philip Schlenker Shares the Barn's History and Why It Was Time to Let it Go
For those who regularly travel down the western portion of Wapakoneta's Glynwood Road, it is hard to miss the quickly changing landscape. Not only is home construction increasing in the Horseshoe Bend area of the road, but a piece of Wapakoneta's Glynwood Road history will soon disappear. Built in 1957 by John and Evon Schlenker and their family, the big white barn on Glynwood's northwest side is being torn down, timber by timber, due mainly to changing times and maintenance costs. The barn replaced a previous Schlenker family barn that was lost to fire in 1956. Below is the story as told earlier this month by Phil Schlenker to Elizabeth Renee Marks of the Wapak News. ————————— “We had a major barn fire in 1956, we had a dairy operation at the time.
The barn was full of hay, it was in late fall, and for whatever reason it caught fire. We assume it was electrical but we never knew why. It was a good size older-style barn, we had an alarm system in it, my mom and dad were very progressive about that, and it was one of the reasons we were able to save the cattle.
The alarm went off, and I was the first one to see it the fire. I looked out my bedroom window, it faced that direction, and I could see flames coming out of the barn window. We called the fire department. I was 12 years old at the time, and we all ran out of the house.
We were about 200 yards from where the fire was. My dad sent me out to the road to stop the fire trucks. There I was, a 12-yr-old in the middle of the road to stop the trucks and show them where the fire hydrant was. They [the firefighters] handed me the end of the hose and the wrench, and they drove the truck on up with the hose unwinding. I had to figure out how to hook up a hose to the fire hydrant and then how to turn in on .... I managed to do that.
“It's sentimental for me because my parents built it, my brother and I and my sister helped build it, we worked on it, it was part of our family heritage for many years.” ~ Phil Schlenker
We were able to save the adjacent buildings and we were able to save the milk parlor, but only because we had the city water hydrant, otherwise we would have lost more than we did. We managed to get most of the cattle out, and we had a big bull at the time, they just opened the pen and he just went out with the cows and never bothered anybody, and they all went back in the fields.
The barn burned, it smoldered for weeks, all the hay underneath just continued to burn..
The decision was made to rebuild. So in 1957 mom and dad rebuilt the barn. That was a time when Elm disease was coming through. My grandfather had a big woods with a lot of Elm trees, so basically the lumber was cut from there and the barn was
built. I helped a little bit, I helped pound nails, and all of the kids helped.
It was a modern barn by the standard of the time. It was a big barn with a round roof, with a lot of hay storage up above. We managed to get it built, and the neighbors helped with the cattle and the production. We were able to maintain the dairy operation through that winter, with a lot of difficulty, but we got it done.
We milked 130 cattle at that time and had a pretty good dairy operation for a number of years.
Mom and dad had a little store at the farm, and a lot [of people] from
Wapak bought milk and eggs there. Everyone knew about the store, we sold natural, unpasteurized milk, but then it became a requirement that you had to pasteurize milk in order to sell it, and that's something we elected not to do. We fought that for a time, but eventually the fight was over and we lost, so we didn't sell that anymore. For a number of years though there were a lot of people in Wapak who grew up on milk from our farm.
Glynwood Road at that time was a two-lane country road with very little traffic. Since that time, of course, the town has grown substantially, and with that growth a dairy operation was no longer feasible this close to town. We ended up selling the cattle and getting out of the dairy business and out of the farming business. We ended up developing the land and putting in [building] lots on the farm ground we owned because it was in the right place at the right time.
It was a nice barn, we maintained it for a time. We used it for storage, but it was a barn built for a cattle operation, it was not built for storage, it was not built for being utilized efficiently in any other manner. It's sentimental for me because my parents built it, my brother and I and my sister helped build it, we worked on it, it was part of our family heritage for many years.
Being close to town, everyone knew the barn. We had a basketball court up in the hay [loft], a full court going both ways, I think that was the gym for the basketball teams for years. Now there are so many other [places to play basketball] that's no longer an issue. But that's where the kids played basketball, almost on a daily basis they'd come and play basketball. We would clear that area of hay first, and we put in a separate hard floor for basketball, there was hay everywhere else. It's sentimental, but things change, and we change with it. Now things are different.
The town grew around us, and everyone knew about the barn because we're really almost in town, but the time came where the barn was in need of maintenance. It needed a new roof and it needed to be painted. To maintain it to look reasonable, it was just going to be too much money. I elected to take it down.
All the lumber will be salvaged, there's a considerable amount that is salvageable. The rafters will be salvaged, along with the heavy timbers, there are tons of heavy timbers in that barn to maintain the second floor and the hay mounds. The timber will be used in other barn construction or it will be sawed into boards. It's all Elm, and there's not much Elm left anymore. A lot of structural material will come out of it.
Progress, barns in the middle of town just don't work. And it wasn't feasible to utilize it for any other purpose because of state codes, building codes, and other kinds of requirements, there's just no way you can do any kind of commercial usage. It was built for cattle, it wasn't good for storage because there wasn't a lot of open space, with the big mangers and support posts and things like that. There was just no good use for it.
I hope to have it done soon. I then intend to have the concrete taken out and clear up the mess. We will level it, we already have some dirt there, and we'll make it a greenfield.i have no plans to do anything with what's left there.
The barn was just getting to the point where it was starting to rot away. I felt that this was the time to take it down. You hate to see it go, but on the other hand, I'll be glad to see it go because it was becoming a major problem. We had the same problem with the house. There was a house that used to sit there, that we ended up taking down about two years ago. It became time to let it go too. If I waited another five or 10 years it would have started to fall down and would have been a hazard, and not what anybody wants [or needs] in that particular area.”