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Quiet Heroes

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 " My dad chased monsters from the dark, He checked underneath my bed. An' he could lift me with one arm, Way up over top his head. He could loosen rusty bolts With a quick turn of his wrench. He pulled splinters from his hand, And never even flinched."      34 years ago today, our family farm burned to the ground. It was a scorching hot July afternoon, and my dad had just began the afternoon milking when the fire broke out. We lost baby calves, equipment, and a barn that had stood tall for decades. I can't help but think of a previous blog post of mine about Good Bad Things... you can read it here if you want ... but this is just one of those Good Bad Things I suppose.      Ironically, earlier that very day in 1991, my mom and dad had talked about how the old barn probably needed rewiring soon. Life has a cruel way of showing how quickly everything can change. "I've learned to never underestimate the impossible... "      The fire didn’t...
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Hold

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  This season… Christmas, life, all the things really, has caught me saying one phrase… “hold it” or “hold still” or “hold on.” (I wrote a portion of this little piece while I was on hold…) “Hold still, Calla, or the dentist can’t clean your teeth.” “Hold your own backpack, Emmy.” “Hold it! Hold that smile for the picture in your concert outfits! Hold it for three more seconds!” “Hold on a minute!! We absolutely can’t get the paint out yet! *as the macaroni boils over and my mom is calling me - probably about coupons for things I don’t buy - and a baby screams from the other room with her fingers pinched in a drawer she just figured out how to open* Hold. A funny word that keeps reoccurring in my life. A recurrent theme- a motif - I would have told you and taught you in a sophomore English class if you had met me 9 or so years ago.  Hold. As goes with every Christmas (and most of my days all year long really), I spend much of my days thinking of Mary. The older I get the more ...
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Good Bad Things

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  60 years ago today, on August 1, 1964, the course of history changed. Evans Dunlap, one of the two brothers who owned, managed, and worked the Dunlap & Co empire, was killed alongside his wife in a car accident. They were headed for Michigan when a drunk driver slammed into their vehicle. Evans and Isabel, both in their 40s, were killed instantly and left behind four children ages 12 to 20. And everything that could have been, was no more. Dunlap & Co was a business that America needed, and a business that has never since come about. Imagine Sears - where you could order a two story 1,900 square foot home. But add the layer of you could customize many more aspects and a crew would come and build it. And build it well and build it fast. And imagine it’s the 1950s. That was the vision and path Dunlap & Co was on. Land leveling and clearing, foundations, lumber, finish work, contractors, to tacking the letters on the mailbox… They. Did. It. All. But then… in a blink of a...
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But the greatest is…

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 ​As I begin to mentally and physically wrap up my year at Dunlaps, I like to take time to reflect, as I always do.  And you’d think I’d be all thoughts and feels about it regarding our 150th year.  And I am. But I’m… not. It's been a year, my friends. A long, not easy, muddled, exhausting year. Stiffed money, scammed majorly, mistreated at times by people who refuse to take ownership of their own actions. It is crazy easy for me to find the hard this year.  I always do this to myself. It’s probably why I continue to grow more and more pessimistic as time marches on, which I hate. I always play a situation up. I have high expectations and a vision for something and it falls not just some short, but so much short of what I thought it would be that I’m thoroughly disappointed.   I've been struggling a lot with understanding systems and schools of thought.  Questioning every move I make. Trying to see why there would be an option 2 and 3 and 4 in th...
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