Tag
inheritance
6 entries
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Saturday, January 1, 1983 · Don Krumpos
Light on a Living Room Wall
Before I knew Europe as geography, I knew it as light on a living room wall. My father had a slide projector—I can still hear, or think I can hear, the dry mechanical click of the carousel advancing, the brief…
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Saturday, December 1, 1984 · Don Krumpos
Keep Playing Here
It was winter in Wisconsin, sometime in the mid-eighties, when snow came in deep drifts against the hedgerows and the cold had a blue cast by late afternoon. My sister and I had been outside for hours, tunneling through snowbanks,…
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Tuesday, January 1, 1985 · Don Krumpos
The Man Who Didn't Like Music
Once I asked my father what kind of music he listened to. I expected an answer. Everyone had music, I thought. Everyone had songs they loved, records they returned to, singers who belonged to them somehow. Even if the answer…
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Tuesday, July 1, 1986 · Don Krumpos
The Cost of Work
I grew up believing my father could do almost anything. He could fell trees, pour concrete, rebuild chimneys, coax tomatoes from difficult soil, repair old machinery with improvised brilliance, and somehow keep a farmstead, a house, gardens, animals, and a…
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Friday, January 1, 1988 · Don Krumpos
What Others Threw Away
The first time I understood my father was a kind of lumberjack, I was carrying his supper out to a stand of trees at the edge of a Royal Scot subdivision. He was up in one of the trees with…
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Friday, January 1, 1993 · Don Krumpos
What He Couldn't Give
The question is harder to answer than it looks. If you ask me what my father could not give, I have to pause. Because in the obvious ways, he gave plenty. He gave hugs. He said, "I love you." Not…