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Wild Krumpos

Day

Tuesday, January 1, 1980

11 entries

  1. Tuesday, January 1, 1980 · Don Krumpos

    Event Date: 1980–1983

    Event Date: 1980–1983 Drafted: 2025-11-23 On the south side of the yard was a narrow path worn by feet and hooves — a secret, liminal space running between the fence line and the shrubs. It wasn’t wide enough for adults,…

  2. Tuesday, January 1, 1980 · Don Krumpos

    Event Date: 1980–1985

    Event Date: 1980–1985 Drafted: 2025-11-23 The barn’s rope swing was not a toy. It was a rite of passage. A thick, coiled rope hung from the rafters high above the haymow floor. It was anchored somewhere in the labyrinth of…

  3. Tuesday, January 1, 1980 · Don Krumpos

    The Farmstead as a Floating World

    From above—like in the satellite photo you shared—our farm looks almost ordinary: buildings arranged around a yard, fields squared by the geometry of agriculture. But living inside it as a child was something else entirely. It wasn’t a grid. It…

  4. Tuesday, January 1, 1980 · Don Krumpos

    Event Date: 1980–1984

    Event Date: 1980–1984 Drafted: 2025-11-23 If the haymow was a cathedral and the tractor was a beast, then the pump house roof was a castle. It wasn’t a tall building — just a small structure that protected the water system…

  5. Tuesday, January 1, 1980 · Don Krumpos

    The Rope Swing

    Event Date: 1980–1983 Drafted: 2025-11-23 The rope swing in the haymow was not installed for children. It existed because farmers always hung ropes from rafters — to pull, to lift, to hoist — but to us it was a rite…

  6. Tuesday, January 1, 1980 · Don Krumpos

    The Farm as Fantasy Landscape

    The hedges came first. They surrounded the whole house, thick and old, the kind of hedge that a grown man would have to push through but a five-year-old could slip under. There was a gap between the bottom of the…

  7. Tuesday, January 1, 1980 · Don Krumpos

    The Pedestal Board

    For a man who had once been president of a college chess club, my father did not actually play chess with me very often. Maybe a dozen times in all. Memory makes it feel like more. Perhaps because each game…

  8. Tuesday, January 1, 1980 · Don Krumpos

    The Television School of Art

    There were three televisions across my childhood, and each one was its own era. The first was a console, a piece of furniture as much as an appliance, heavy dark wood with a dial you turned and a screen that…

  9. Tuesday, January 1, 1980 · Don Krumpos

    The Tractor Hay Hook Ritual

    Event Date: 1980–1985 Drafted: 2025-11-23 After the hay wagon was filled — whether from the field rake, the ditch cuttings, or the tumbledown sides of the haymow — the final ritual began: unloading. Dad would back the tractor into the…

  10. Tuesday, January 1, 1980 · Don Krumpos

    Uncle Ken

    Uncle Ken cut my hair until middle school. Every few weeks I'd sit on a kitchen chair with a towel around my shoulders while he worked the scissors and we talked about nothing important. He was my godfather. I share…

  11. Tuesday, January 1, 1980 · Don Krumpos

    Work Clothes

    My father was always steady and sturdy to me. Physically, first. That was how a child knew him. He had huge biceps and forearms, the kind made not in a gym but by work repeated over years. Lifting, hauling, carrying,…