Me

Sometimes I wonder who I am.

One of my daughters needed a bookcase. I had some spare time, some square tubing in the shop and a few walnut boards, so I whacked one together for her. I showed it to one of my granddaughters and she said, “Papa, you made this?”

I wouldn't say her tone was admiring. I'd have to say what I heard was disbelief.

Even if she was surprised, I wasn't. But then my granddaughter never met the version of me that took our hog trailer to Garelick Steel on Broadway Ave in Minneapolis to buy steel by the ton, which we used to build most of our own livestock equipment. I may be old, but I've still got some skills.

I sure remember those days. To make the round trip in one day usually meant leaving the Twin Cities to head home during rush hour. Our trailer was sixteen feet long, and the steel came in pieces 20 feet long. Hanging a few hundred pounds of steel four feet out the back of the trailer made for a dramatic change in the center of gravity, which meant I could only drive about 40 mph before the trailer started to sway back and forth. The next step would have been a jackknife, so even though there are probably still commuters angry at me forty years later, I still think taking it slow was in everyone's best interest. I'd pull over onto the shoulder every few miles to let traffic stream past, but I never got the impression people appreciated that gesture.

I know I've told this story before, but it's important to me, so here we go again. When I was very young, I read a short story by Kipling called “The Miracle of Puran Bhagat,” in which the main character lives his life according to a Buddhist saying, “Twenty years a student, twenty years a warrior, twenty years the head of a household.” The message I took away was that in life, every now and then it's perfectly reasonable, maybe even desirable, to become a completely different person, with different responsibilities and goals. The twenty-five-year-old me, who spent winters with his breath frosting a welding helmet in an under-heated shop in an effort to save a few bucks, would be unrecognizable to my grandchildren. The Sunday school teacher taking the youth group to the mountains in Jamaica to fix hurricane damage in churches, the guy making barbecued pork at midnight in a deeply flawed attempt to diversify the farm, and the beginning writer late at night sending letter after letter to prospective agents and publishers hoping to find one dumb enough to take me on as a client...those are all versions of me that have showed up over the years.

There are a few versions of me that I'm glad are gone forever, some others that I miss. I keep waiting for the relaxed, placid twilight years version of me to show up, but maybe that isn't in the cards.

In the meantime, I'll build bookcases.

Copyright 2025 Brent Olson