One of my 93-year-old father's favorite activities is traveling with my sister and brother-in-law through the Amish territory by Fairbank. It's all he'll talk about for several days afterwards. And he's ready and willing to go back again every two weeks.
A little background on my father: He's been a farmer all of his life. Even after retirement, he still kept informed about the changes occurring in farming. He was a farmer's son. He worked as a farm hand after he left home. When he married, he and my mother (a Waterloo city girl) moved to the farm that he still owns. He's lived through a lot, including the Great Depression and World War II. Because they had land for crops and animals and little money, they weren't affected by the Depression and the war as much as others.
Bob Artley's Seasons on the Farm ( 741.597 ART) is the perfect book to show Dad. The whimsical, sentimental cartoons will bring back a lot of memories for him. Artley writes about all of the activities farm kids used to do years ago: thrashing the oats, going to the one-room school house, plowing with horses, milking by hand, gathering chicken eggs, cleaning out the hog house, etc.
I'm sure that once I show this book to Dad, he'll remember a lot more stories to tell me about his own childhood and farming.
c Waterloo Public Library 2007
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