Event Date: 1978–1981 (approx.)

Event Date: 1978–1981 (approx.) Drafted: 2025-11-23

Most kids had swing sets. We had rusted farm machinery.

Old implements sat half-buried in the soil like dinosaur skeletons: the grain drill, the seeder, the baler with its heavy iron teeth, the hay rake with wheels shaped like enormous metal sunflowers.

To anyone else, they were relics. To us, they were the best playground in the world.

The grinding wheel became a spaceship control panel. The parts bin was a fort. The broken sickle mower was a forbidden zone — which only made it more fascinating.

Everything was old, heavy, vaguely dangerous, and perfect.

It wasn’t curated play. It wasn’t sanitized or safe. It was discovery — the kind that teaches the body how to move through the world. I learned balance by walking the beams of the hay loader. I learned caution from the rusted edges. I learned imagination from everything else.

This was the texture of childhood on a 1970s Wisconsin hobby farm: rough, unplanned, full of wonder.