R = Raze

I love words that make me pause before I use them!  I almost get excited over using them appropriately.  RAZE  is one of those words that I love and savor using because it defies the definition I learned originally that sounds the same but means the opposite.  Come on grammarians—what is the term for that?  Think!

The little boy sits down to dinner with his family and grinning, excited, announces, “My friend told me they’re going to ‘raze’ the barn next farm over tomorrow morning.  Can I go watch?  Please?  Maybe help?”

His father smiles as if to himself while dishing up some peas.  “Help?  How do you think you’d be able to help?” he asks quietly.

“I could bring lumber to the men putting it up!  I could help keep them supplied with nails.  I’d be a real part of the whole thing!” the little boy exclaims.

“I don’t think you know what is going to happen,” the father says, still smiling.  “They aren’t going to raise Mr. Jenkins barn, they’re going to raze it.”

“I know!  I know!  I want to help!” the little boy insists, still trying to get approval for his adventure, not hearing his father’s words completely.

The mother looks at the her husband and he acknowledges the look as he turns from her back to the boy.  “Sure,” he says.  “Get your chores done around here and go on over.  I hope you have fun and learn something.”

“Oh, thank you!  I will!  I’ll tell you all about it!  I can’t wait!  I’m going to get to bed early so I can get up and get my stuff done and get over there right off!  Thanks again!” he says as he eats hurriedly to start his part in the adventure.  And the father smiles at the mother as she smiles at the boy.

The next morning, the boy gets up while it is still dark and runs from animal to animal, feeding each and making sure they have water.  He sweats as he scoops up horse apples into the wheelbarrow and runs it to the manure pile to empty it.  Then he puts away hay fork, shovel, rake, watering buckets, chicken feed, rabbit feed, gathers eggs from disgruntled hens, and as the sun rises, finishes all chores.  He sits down for breakfast, mumbles yes to the list of chores his father asks if he’s accomplished around mouthfuls of food, and gulps down his milk.  His father says, “Be sure you take your dishes to the sink and then you can go.  Have a good day.”

The boy bolts to the kitchen with his dishes and says good-bye as the screen door slams behind him.  The father shakes his head, smiling.

The boy meets his friend as they watch the men gather to ‘raze’ the barn.  They whisper to each other how they plan to help without getting in the way, and build the new barn.  But they become confused as they watch men working with ropes around the old barn’s base.  Finally, one boy walks up to the workmen, and asks, “Aren’t you going to raise the new barn?  What are you doing here at the old one?” 

The workman closest stops, looks at the young observer and states, “We’re getting ready to raze the old barn first.  Then we’ll raise the new one.”  He turns back to his work and the one boy walks back to his friend and looking totally confused, repeats what he was told.

“What?  That’s crazy!  You can’t raise an old barn!”  

“That’s what he said.  Honest truth!”

Incredulous over what has been said, they sit down and settle in to watch.  They watch the men tie the ropes at the base of the old barn, attach them to harnesses on the waiting horses’ huge yokes, and then command the horses to pull forward against the strain of the ropes attached to the barn.  The boys shake their heads.  They had never seen a barn raised this way.  With strategically placed ropes, horses obeying on command, slowly but surely, the old barn is razed.  When it is totally taken down, old lumber lying on the ground, a workman motions towards the boys and waves them over.  They quickly run to the site, and hear the workman ask, “You boys want to help finish razing the barn?”  

Still confused, but wanting to be a part of the work, they nod yes and are directed to piles of wood to be sorted and picked up and placed in new piles of lumber that can be re-used and that which will be hauled off for either other projects or fire wood come winter.  The boys work diligently, trying to make themselves invaluable helpers until nothing remains of the old barn.  The workman invites them to sit with him and the others for some lemonade and to take a short rest.

“You boys really did some good work,” one of the men comments.  The boys smile at the man, proud, and then at each other.  The boy who was so excited the night before to help asked, “Can I ask you something, sir?” of the workman that praised them.  The workman nods and the boy says, “We thought we were coming to a barn raising and instead, you tore the old barn down.  We don’t get it.  I mean, we were glad to help and all, but we thought we’d get to help build a barn, not tear it down.”

All of the men laughed.  “We did raze the barn, boys.  Tomorrow morning, we will raise the new one,” the one man  said and they all laughed again.  The boys faces turned red because they still did not understand but were embarrassed by their ignorance.  The eldest of the workmen, a graying man, slightly bent from years of heavy work, said, “  You raze, r-a-z-e, something by tearing it down completely.  You raise, r-a-i-s-e, something by creating and building it up.  Get it?”  The boys looked at each other and then at the man, wondering about what they had just been told.  The old man, seeing they were still confused, said, “This morning you helped raze the old barn so that tomorrow, we can raise the new one.  Okay?”

The wheels of their brains started to turn as the boys tried to understand.  Slowly, they understood that what they had always thought they learned correctly could be a word sounding  the same but have two totally different meanings.  Their faces lost the redness and they felt as if they had actually gone through a rite of passage into the world of working men.  They laughed, this time with the men, as they were now a part of the group.  They were invited back to the barn-raising to follow the next day, thanked again by the group of men for their work and left, feeling older and wiser.

That night, at the supper table, the father asked the boy about his day.  The boy said, “Well, I learned you can r-a-z-e  a barn and you can 

r-a-i-s-e a barn.  I just wish I had listened better to you last night.”  The father just smiled, and the boy smiled back.

Yes, I do love words that play in my mind like raze.  The word makes me stop, think, use it carefully and in the right context. It is not a throw-away word.  It is so unique and I truly love it and using it—a rare gem of a word.

Heh heh—a homonym