The long road

 I sat on the front porch of the house my great-grandad built over 100 years ago. As a kid, I had to leave the house an hour before the bus arrived because the dirt road to the stop was over a mile from the house. I often wondered why there was so much distance from the house to the county road, and my dad told me that Granddad wasn't very fond of people in general, so he built the house as far back as his property would allow.

On either side of the long road were row upon row of corn that my dad said were grown during the Great War to feed the troops, and to this day still produce corn for worldwide hunger programs. Granddad may not have cared for people, but he cared for his country.

When I sit in silence on the porch, I do hear nature like the songs of birds and croaks of frogs. I hear the cows mooing and chickens cackling, and my dog barking at the wind. Unlike today, when granddad tilled the earth, he used mules and manpower, quite a lot of manpower,  and the only sounds were him giving commands to the mules and the occasional curse words when they didn't listen to him.
Today, I spend hours on a tractor or combine, noisy machines that would have granddad rolling over in his grave and covering his ears. But when my day is done, and the machines go silent, the peaceful moments return to me, sitting on the porch granddad built, and I understand why that road is so long.

Mike 2026