Around fifteen years ago, a friend recommended that I get on Brent Olson’s email list. She thought I’d like his writing.
These days, he has a Substack newsletter, “Independently Speaking.” His profile description? “Just an old guy in a small place, trying to figure out what matters.” I can relate.
Born about five weeks after me, Brent has worn a lot of hats in his time, so he has plenty of material. He farmed for thirty years and still lives on the family homestead. A sense of place and the pull of memory pervade his writing: “Just at the edge of our grove, right next to Anna’s roses, is the spot where my Great-Uncle Carl told me to stop walking my horse and gallop.”
I grew up 140 miles straight south of him, but in town, not on a farm. Therefore, he learned to do stuff and I didn’t. While I had cousins on both sides of my family who lived on farms (and I loved to visit them), I was an observer not a doer. (Some things never change.)
Unfortunately — as Brent wrote more than a decade ago — all too often:
People who make things and fix things are seen as interchangeable and disposable, while people who move paper and electrons across desks and around the world are seen as valuable. . . But every now and then the guy whose resume begins with, “I know how to work,” has his day. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that those days usually begin with storm clouds, dark skies and troubles you just don’t want to face alone.
His own projects on the farm are fodder for stories, including the things that go haywire and the aches and pains that result. Witness a recent tale involving a glove that had a trace of paint thinner on it and a new welding helmet with a lens that darkens when the welding arc starts. Perhaps you can guess what happened.
Whatever the topic, Brent has a way of putting things in perspective. In a piece that started with getting new tires and a full tank of gas, he mused about retirement and bucket lists, before recounting this:
A few years ago, I was teaching a writing class and had the students answer the question, “If you could have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?” Usually the answer would involve a rock star or famous actor. But this particular class was made up of residents in a nursing home, and the answer I loved the most was, “I’d like to have coffee with my neighbor Mavis one more time. She died three years ago.”
Often the simplest things are the most valuable. When it comes to food, “fresh sweet corn and a BLT” can’t be matched by a fancy dinner, and “perhaps the best meal I ever had in my life was half a cup of cold coffee and a handful of Cheetos, sitting in the dark in a parked combine, celebrating the end of a difficult harvest season.” The magic can happen in the most unlikely places:
When we were repairing hurricane damage on a church in the hills of Jamaica, the church ladies made a grill out of an old brake drum and cooked us the best fried chicken I’ll ever eat. The chicken had lived a long and active life, but it was seasoned with care, love, and fellowship.
Whether it’s writing about the inanities of political scrum, the vagaries of the weather, or an encounter with a six-year-old girl with freckles sitting next to him at a play, Brent has a way with words; these are from different pieces he has written over the years:
There’s a tremendous amount of important work in this world that needs doing. You just don’t get paid for most of it.
There are frustrations in life, but then there are the real problems we come up against and it’s always good to know the difference. In fact, I’d say that’s the most important thing — to know the difference between what matters and what doesn’t.
Our dreams need to be stronger than our memories, because while we need to honor the past, we need to live in the future, lest we cheat those who come after us.
I look forward to getting Brent’s email each Friday. Most every week, I also send Sue an email with a simple subject line: “Boyd,” with a link to the latest chapter in Boyd Huppert’s series, “Land of 10,000 Stories.”
While I quit watching television news some time ago, I have an electronic reminder to check the KARE-11 website each week so that I don’t miss any of Boyd’s stories.
Many of them tug at your heart and bring tears to your eyes. A beauty school student thrills the residents of a nursing home where she works with her designs for their nails. Friends create a man cave for their buddy — a state champion wrestler turned Marine — who was tragically injured in Iraq. High school robotics team members build custom wheelchairs for kids. A family harvests the crop planted by their father; to help others, they wanted to share the story of his suicide.
Other stories are more “slice of life”: a drive-through lefse stand that draws people from far away; the guy who builds a twenty-foot snowman in his yard every year; a community that buys a piano for a young prodigy; the last video store in the Twin Cities; and the happiest McDonald’s cashier ever.
And then there’s the amazing story of Jonah.
Like Brent, Boyd has a remarkable ability to end his pieces in just the right way. And Boyd’s impressive array of awards is a testament to the respect he commands among broadcasters for his skill.
I didn’t know anything about Boyd’s background until I saw a recent piece he did about a man who had taken a photo with a film camera each of the previous ten thousand days. At the end of it, in front of the camera for once, Boyd drove the man’s 1965 John Deere 4020. You could tell he was tapping into something in his past.
A week later, it was revealed that Boyd’s multiple myeloma, for which he had gone through grueling treatments two years prior, was on the move again. The video shows him back in a hospital bed, ready to try an innovative new therapy, doing whatever he can to grab some more of life.
Brent and Boyd are storytellers. Brent writes of his own life and times, while Boyd reveals a tapestry of interesting people. Each perspective is important, helping us to make sense of who we are and to find our way in the world.