Before I buy a shirt, I look at the label to see if it’s 100% cotton. If it is, it usually requires ironing. I think I have an iron and ironing board somewhere in the house. Maybe. 100% cotton means it stays on the rack and I look for another shirt. I bet when Grandpa’s mother made a sweater out … Read More

I can imagine how it sounded: “Can I have your phone number please, starting with the area code?” “6.” “I’m sorry, I just caught the first number. Can you give it to me again?” “Yes. 6. That’s my phone number.” I can’t even keep up with the latest in cell phone technology. Pretty soon, we’re going to have a chip … Read More

When I tell people where we live, I’ve actually had a couple folks ask if we had indoor plumbing. They picture rural Nebraska with outhouses and well water that we have to carry in with buckets. (We are on well water, but it has a pump and we have an operating sink!) We’ve come a long way since then, but … Read More

Before we got married, we went to the store and registered for gifts we thought we needed as a new couple, some of which included two sizes of plates, matching bowls and coffee mugs. I think a place setting totaled about $8, if memory serves me right. The coffee mugs have never been used – I guess square plates are … Read More

Then: A hand-held corn planter that planted seeds, one by one. Versus Now: A 24-row drawn planter with consistent, accurate seed spacing, liquid fertilizer pump and delivery system, variable rate drive and insecticide application system. It was the spring of 1940 and my grandfather had just endured his first year of life in the college of agriculture at the University … Read More

Then: My grandparents started out every morning by pulling their one-legged milking stool from the wall of the barn, then managed a balancing act with the stool and a bucket between their knees to catch the cow’s milk. One at a time, the cows would file into the barn, all three to five of them in the herd, to be … Read More

Each fall, we cruise past fields where combines are busy harvesting crops, averaging 200 bushels per acre at 6 mph with a 6- or 12-row corn head. We have augers and grain bins and yield monitors and so many numbers our computers, not our notepads, are full to the brim. Now let’s rewind about 80 years. I have to preface … Read More