Boy to Man

Boy-to-man starts with physical changes: the youngster’s body begins to muscle up and grow hair; his voice breaks in public one afternoon, embarrassing him; he may experience a growth spurt that makes him uncoordinated for a while; his beard starts growing. But beyond the physical changes that arrive imperceptibly, a boy’s road to manhood will […]

As boys go, I wasn’t much. I mean, I tried to be a boy and spent many childhood hours pummeling my hardly formed ego with failure at Cowboys and Indians, baseball, football, lying, and sneaking out of the house. When our neighborhood gang raided a neighbor’s pear tree, I was the only one who got

It was time. It was time to become a man, my father said. One of the traditional fall outings for our family in Iowa was to go into the country armed with gunnysacks in search of black walnuts. Sometimes the nuts, encased in thick green and black hulls, could be found under trees beside country

A gang of thugs waited for me after school. They’d picked on me through junior high, and though I’d fought their ringleader in a wrestling match, the bullying continued. It was never clear why I was their target. Was it the competition over Mary Alice, the answer to a teenage prayer? Was it because I

A‌‌t thirteen, something inside you already knew not to cry in the company of grown men. First time you helped unload a trailer of hundred pound sacks of horse feed packed in scratch-ass burlap, all other farm work was suspended. Everyone was pulled in to make a human conveyor from truck to feed room where

Dad awakened me long before the light showed on this cold winter morning. A norther had arrived during the night; by morning it was cold and clear, ideal weather for hog killing. The men in the neighborhood had concluded the approaching storm was suitable to provide the three cold days needed for the vital curing