Cornfield Chronicles

Growing up on a farm can be a special experience. It can be hard at times because parents expect kids to start helping at an early age. But, it also can be a great playground, a place of adventure and space to wander.

I wrote this collection of stories as a way to share memories with my children and grandchildren. To relay some of my childhood experiences on an Iowa farm that was in our family for more than a hundred years.

Snippets of some of these stories could be shared around the dining room table or during visits, but life sometimes gets busy with harried five-minute conversations, texts, emails and computer/smart phone face time.

Writing this collection has been a way for me to bring back family and friends who have passed on but remain very vivid in my memory. It's my way of ensuring some of their stories will live long after I join them.

Quite a few folks in these stories, who are close to my age and younger, are still alive. I hope I have treated them well and that they enjoy my meanderings down memory lane.

Most of the stories take place from the late 1950s to early 1970s. This is the telling of one boy's experiences (mine) on one Iowa farm at one point in time. It doesn't reflect other farm kids' experiences. It is not supposed to. Every farm and every family is different.

I tried to avoid using offensive language but a few words -- fairly mild by today's standards -- have been used in a few of the stories. It's a rare person who can work in sweltering summer heat during haying season or have an animal turn on them and not utter a perfectly descriptive off-color phrase.

An old farmer once helped pull hay bales off of yours truly after a stack collapsed on me while baling. I was not hurt but came out of the pile swearing like a sailor. I apologized to him for my potty mouth.

He just chuckled, helped brush me off and said, "It's OK to swear, son. Never trust anyone who doesn't swear. They've got something to hide."

Some of my family and friends might be puzzled by seeing me referred to as "Doc." No, I did not go back to school and earn an advanced degree. It's not deserved, more like christened. After retiring a few years ago from a career in journalism, I turned my attention to fiction writing and used my initials -- M.L. -- for my author name.

During a book-signing event with other authors, a local newspaper misprinted my name as M.D. in a news item. After that, I joked I should be called Doc. Guess what? The other authors started using the nickname, and the moniker stuck.

The farm boy stories are told as I remember them. Some are humorous, others nostalgic, and one is brutally honest. Most are about my adventures and misadventures. The conversations are reconstructed to the best of my memory and reflect most likely what was said at the time. I may have applied some "artistic" license, but not much.

Some of the experiences were traumatic, humorous or sad and were burned into my brain. Writing about them has helped me relive those moments.

If these stories revive memories in others who read this, I hope they are pleasant ones.