When the fair rolled in with its rickety roller coasters and Ferris wheels pulled from a box, we didn’t race into town with our pockets full of coins like most kids. We didn’t hunger for overpriced funnel cake or candied apples, nor pinch pennies to toss rings at empty soda pop bottles. We had everything we ever needed right there on the farm...

The 4th of July was the day I looked forward to most on the farm. It began with the annual Farm Olympics, where everyone won a trophy and winners and losers did not exist. My poor cousin, Lisa, had to be penalized after every single event to even the playing field; she was just so much faster than the rest of us, and God forbid Farm Olympics didn’t end with every kid receiving the exact same number of points...

The original baseball field died in the summer of 1949, along with 25 acres of trees and my dream of ever becoming the next Joe DiMaggio. We had spent hours creating that field, hours that felt more like months to an 11-year-old in the heat of summer...

When summer was drawing to a close and the cranberries were ripe on the vines, we knew my gram, Rose, was about to make her famous cran cobbler. She’d toss out an order to fetch some pans from the hidden pantry in her bedroom, and like Pavlov’s dogs, our mouths would water as we foraged through the pantry for the largest cranberry-picking pans we could find...

Sundays at the farm were all about fighting a sea of bodies to the bathroom, followed by farmhouse OJ, Rose’s famous breakfast, and a hearty debate over which church we would all attend that morning. Mater Dolorosa or St. Patrick’s? It would boil down to which church had the shorter service and, of course, the better donut shop nearby...

Penny and Rose each had five siblings. Together, they had four children, who then collectively brought eleven grandchildren into the world. To an outsider, our family tree had reached capacity. But where others saw a full house, Rose saw an open door. The farm became a playground for visiting friends, a place of reunion for relatives passing through, and a haven for countless babies she fostered over the years... 

“It’s dinner time!” Rose hollered to Penny, who tinkered in the living room with his train set and a little town whose population grew twofold by the hour. The thick smell of coffee grounds permeated the air, as Penny placed townspeople one by one on streets paved with Maxwell House...

I’ll never forget the commercials that ran around Christmas time with jingles and slogans that take me back to my parents’ living room, the thick carpet at my feet, and the blurred faces of my favorite stars growing just a tad clearer with each toggle of the rabbit ears...

Rose’s path through the meadow was picturesque and led directly to the mailbox along the road. We made a sport out of running through the field to the mailbox, our arms stretched from side to side to stir the scent of wildflowers as we ran...

After a heavy rain, the valley was a river, and my grandparents’ 48-acre farm in western Pennsylvania became a playground of puddles. Sure, we built dams from burlap sacks and sand to avoid flooding and took shelter inside by a toasty fire when a storm got too rough, but the rain also brought with it a whole new book of adventures to be written, and I was more than willing to take its blank pages and run...

Over the years, those old linens on the line trapped snipes, slinged broken bones, and warmed honeymooners in the barn; they were tents and togas, capes and clubhouse curtains...but never really bed sheets; they were something bigger...

In 1983, Ralphie Parker would beg and plead for “an official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle” in A Christmas Story. But in 1975, all this little boy wanted was a Browning .22 caliber, 20-inch barrel, automatic. No need for leg lamps or oversized bunny suits or even begging and pleading, for on Christmas morning, there it was—wrapped in the shape of a rifle and sitting beneath our tree. 

The mid-August sunrise splashed across the front grass, the morning dew glistening for miles. The slip ‘n slide was still unfurled from the day before, like a mighty yellow river trailing down to the lake. It was a pond, really, but “lake” made it sound much bigger, and to us, that lake was larger than life...

Doused in leaves of red and yellow, our small town was picturesque in autumn. Seated along the Monongahela River, the air was a crisp 45, as the unboxing of steel tracks, model bridges and road signs announced the arrival of yet another holiday season in Glassport, Pennsylvania...

The air smelled green and sun-warmed — like grass, leaves, and something alive at the edge of the woods. The pond had that mineral scent I’ve never been able to describe — not dirty, not clean either. Just its own. And from the far corner came the steady scrape of Penny clearing algae from the overflow grate at the water’s edge...