Dinner in the Field and other stories
I find you can discover your strengths at any age. For example, I find I’m a better writer than I am an editor. I have a full-length draft of a memoir that I’ve devoted countless hours to, and it’s finally finished. I’m anxious to move on to new material. But finishing the book is not the same as completing the project. Doing it right, I’m told, entails a less than...
Bad news on the doorstep...
During this summer drought I’ve been watering my garden early in the morning. Sometimes I’m out there when the paper lady shows up. Her husband cruises slowly down our street and hands her papers from the car window which she throws on our driveways. Used to be all the neighbors got a paper. The stops now are both few and far between. She complains about the cost of the plastic...
I Miss My son
I miss my son. He’s been living out of the country for nearly two years. I saw him Christmas before last and it’s just been too long. We Skype from time to time, but there’s a time difference and we’re both too busy to work that out, too much alike in being averse to planning ahead. We don’t talk enough. Even when we do, dress it up all you want...
Going to Springfield as a Boy
My Dad had pale blue eyes and tried hard at times to hide his feelings. I think he feared they made him weak. But when you looked in his eyes they told you everything. He was a gentle man whose life was hard, but he managed to stay happy which inspired us all. He once spanked me with a wooden hairbrush for refusing to wear a cap. I was four....
Life and Death in the Backyard
A terrible thing is happening at my bird feeder. I’ve been feeding birds for a long time and feeling good about it. My feeder is on a pole, with a plastic dome under it that prevents squirrels from raiding it, twenty feet from the patio door in the back of the house. I feed black oil sunflower seeds to the cardinals and jays and woodpeckers and whatever else makes it...
Shelling Corn
When we had dinner, which was the noon meal on the farm, the radio was always on. We might be sitting there talking, or listening to Mom tell some story she’d heard on the phone that morning, but when the noon farm report came on, particularly the grain prices from the Chicago Board of Trade, everything stopped. Dad tuned out. He looked to be gazing out the window above the...
We Kept Sheep
I thought I’d kick off 2012 with a farm story from a January long ago. Happy New Year. We kept twenty or thirty sheep across the road on a three cornered patch of low pasture, maybe four acres. A creek ran through it and it was too wet to farm. The triangle was created before I was born when they changed the path of Illinois Route 9 between Bloomington and...
...With every paper I'd deliver...
I was home on Saturday when my paper man showed up. He delivers the local daily (except Sunday) newspaper with a bike and a bike trailer. We had spoken months ago. He was fired up then about being a paper man and was especially proud of the tow behind contraption he had built himself to carry the papers. The key to the trailer, he said, were the oversize wheels. “Got...
Here we go
In response to much urging, I start this endeavor on a cold morning in May 2011. It’s the 27th, the Friday before Memorial Day. Do blogs automatically record the date? The shack’s little wood burner is not hooked up yet (stove pipe on its way) so I’m huddled in blankets before work, typing. I hope to make this blog a place where I can create non-work pieces that supplement but...