The Book is Here!

To All the Horses I Have Loved Before is now available on Amazon. It is 199 pages and is on Amazon for $9.99. It is a collection of short stories and drawings, some from my edited blogs. It is also available on Kindle for $3.99.

Some more fun news: while Lilly was out driving around, she stopped at a bookstore. Being Lilly, who never met a stranger, she began conversing with the owner. She set up a book signing for me at the local bookstore! I have to go back to the bookstore with my mini-me manager and set it up.

Weird news of the day: I found my book selling for $43.97 (yes, American dollars) on eBay! For 43.97 I would have called the buyer and read the book to them!

An excerpt from my latest project, tentatively titled: Tubby & Me (written by popular demand)

The bathroom is a makeshift structure outside the house, built over a hole that Mom, Donna, and Tubby dig by hand.

Let me clarify.

Donna assists when she is available. However, she possesses the uncanny ability to disappear into thin air. It is a truly wondrous magic she employs. One minute my sister is standing there; the next, she is gone.

To her credit, Donna does much of the farmwork by herself before Tubby is old enough to assist. By the time I arrive, Donna has already done her time.

Mom is the daughter of a logger and carpenter. Today, Grandpa Grow might collect any number of descriptions: obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive, on the spectrum, or perhaps someone with Asperger’s.

Mom simply says, “My dad was an ornery son of a bitch. If you were gonna do something, you’d better do it right.”

Mom admits that she is a lot like Grandpa Grow. In fact, she seems to delight in the orneriness she claims to have inherited.

This means that when it comes to digging an outhouse hole, Mom is the engineer.

The outhouse-hole-digging project, when assigned as punishment, is suitable only for Tubby.

Donna disappears.

Mom measures the site, outlines the hole, and makes a few test cuts in the sod. Suddenly, she must go inside and make supper. Or she needs to take food “out to your father in the field.”

Dad does not participate in digging the outhouse hole. His contribution comes later. His job is to secure a chain around the small building and drag it by tractor to its new location.

The grass is always greener and thicker along the trail Dad creates when he pulls the outhouse across the yard.

As the youngest and too small to help dig, I carry water to the hole diggers. First there are three diggers, then two, and finally one.

One very angry and resentful hole digger.

If I am the reason for Tubby’s punishment, I carefully set a glass of water near the hole and run away. As the hole grows deeper and the swearing becomes worse, I decide that if Tubby truly wants a drink, he can climb out and use the garden hose.

When the six-foot-long, eight-foot-deep hole is finished, it is a marvel of human craftsmanship.

The first layer is sod backed by dark, damp, black soil. This is where the earthworms live, so I usually refrain from getting too close during this stage.

The next layer is clay.

This is the fun stuff.

Thick and wet from snowmelt and summer rain, the chunks of clay tossed out of the hole are perfect for sculpting. I imagine the clay is heavy and difficult to dig through and even harder to throw out of the hole.

That part is probably not fun for Tubby.

Although, honestly, none of these punishments is fun.

The next layer is rock.

Formed by glaciers in ancient times, Minnesota is one large rock. A glacier sweeps through Otter Tail County and, in an amazing coincidence, drops every rock it carries onto the land my father eventually purchases.

From Siberia, across the Bering Strait, through Canada and northern Minnesota, and finally into rural Otter Tail County, the glacier collects boulders and rocks along its path.

Nature being nature—and apparently harboring a deep resentment toward the Baumgarts—decides to melt the glacier directly over our farm.

It leaves behind no precious metals or even semi-precious jewels. It leaves only swamps, sloughs, and rocks.

More rocks than anyone can imagine. Not agates. Not quartz. Just plain rocks.

My daughter is an earth scientist, and I point out to her that not all rocks are valuable. Some are simply “sex stones.”

“Sex stones?”

“Yes, honey. Just more fucking rocks.”