OPINION

Not too long after one of my dad’s more major surgeries, he asked me to follow him to his office — a small room past his workshop where he liked to play his records and watch old comedies like Laurel and Hardy. It’s where he kept his high school yearbooks, remembrances from his years in the Army and as a police officer, and many handmade Father’s Day gifts.

He was weak from recovery and used his foot to slide out a cardboard box from under his desk, and I lifted it onto his chair. It contained dozens of yellow legal pads, the lines filled with his one-of-a-kind handwriting. It turned out he had written his way through his eighth grade memories as a farm kid in South Dakota. He threw in some fiction perhaps for the sake of courage.

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My mom still lives in the house I grew up in, and so I have the luxury of pulling into the driveway every now and then and opening the same front door I used to barrel through as a kid. The laundry still dries on the same clothesline, the basement stairs creak the same way they always have. But some things have changed. The bedroom decor of teenagers has long been replaced. The kitchen cabinets were switched out maybe five or so years ago. I don’t understand the new system, and I can’t get over that the bread is no longer in the bread drawer. “This is the bread drawer,” my mom tells me gesturing in a different direction, and I feel unreasonably adamant that there can be no new designated bread drawer. Also, my dad has died. It’s easier to focus on the bread drawer.

Earlier this year, ag writer LeeAnne Bulman wrote a piece about the history of the former town of Delhi, Wisconsin. She mentioned there was a woman who had owned a cheese factory in Delhi, but her name hadn’t survived history. (I can’t help but wonder if the reason is less to do with dairy and more to do with being female.)

The idea of surviving history stayed with me. On a familial level, we do so much to keep our people with us: giving babies an inherited first or middle name (fingers crossed it’s a good one); hanging on to heirlooms; and clinging to family traditions. But if you need the reminder (like I do): print a few photos from your phone every so often.

8 — Wright Farms ‘Got Milk’ and so much more 10 — Husband and wife make a great

He asked me if I would type the stories up, maybe see what I could do with them. I had no idea he had been writing, or even enjoyed writing. More than surprise was the emotion that came with understanding why he was sharing his writing. Limited sand in the hour glass. A quiet dream with a now louder ache. A hope to survive history, perhaps.

Each notebook has a circled number in the top right corner to keep track of the order, and some pages have a few extra lines paperclipped in. I’m impressed he went without the aid of the backspace button or copy and paste. I can picture him choosing his words carefully— and when needed, editing with whiteout, waiting for the drying period, and writing again over the corrected strip.

I’m not sure my dad would have ever gotten the hang of typing. If he had, it certainly would have saved him some time, but to have his stories in his own writing is a gift technology would have taken away.

Below are some of his recollections about Midwest farm life in June circa 1957.

Vacation was definitely here. I was sitting on a tractor heading out to the field to do some serious cultivating and it was early in the morning. Anyway, according to my standards, it was early.

With chores to do, Dad would tell me every morning to get an early start before the day gets hot. I wished I had the nerve to tell him that no matter

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