Last night I sent an email to my friend Christopher and said that life is not stranger than fiction, it’s just strange. This is very true. We talk a great deal about coincidence, and serendipitous circumstances, but really, it’s all just a roll of the dice, what happens.

I was actually seeking a comparison, and I found it. I read a book that my friend Christopher Benson sent me, Forty Acres Deep, by Michael Perry. It is a very dark book about a farmer who in his final days is going under. It begins with his wife dying and him laying her out on the back porch, where she remains through winter. And it ends with his torching the house. He is inside when he does this, and his wife is still on the porch.

I kept reading the book simply because the descriptions were so good. He also did well getting at the thought process of his central character. Christopher said last night in an email that he was disappointed in this character in the end. Yes, Perry did bring him to life and then to death. His bringing him to death, this was what Christopher had a hard time with. Me too. I need at times to see light, and all I saw in this book was darkness.

At about the time I started this book, I took note of a farm on the right-hand side of the highway going into town. There were three head of cattle in the front area, one was a very young beef cow. Every day I went by this place and wondered who owned it and what was going on.

One day there was for sale sign on the corner of the Glenn Highway and Palmer Fishhook Road. And the cows were gone. I wondered if this farmer was in the same straits as Michael Perry’s farmer. I started asking people what they knew about this place, and the owner.

I asked Pam Meekin, a friend of mine, a few days ago. Pam grew up in the area; she knows everyone. She told me the place is owned by a long-time family, the Kerttulas, and that the fellow who owned the cows is the caretaker. She added that his wife Lily died a year ago. Floyd is now by himself.

We went out there today, me and Pam. Floyd was not there, so we walked around and looked at the place, which is in a state of complete disarray. The house that Pam spent her very early childhood in has a hole in the roof. Barns are caving in. A silo has no top. Floyd’s place does not look like a house anyone lives in.

As we were walking away, Floyd pulled in. 70s. Round face. Kind but rheumy eyes. Tall. Wearing an old Carhartt jacket. Teeth need work. He and Pam talked some, and I listened. He was wanting to find someone to take a load of wood to a friend in nearby Chickaloon. His own wood situation doesn’t seem that good – he’s chopping up wood pallets and burning them. He has no running water, electricity, phone, or lights.

He seemed to accept his lot in life as a matter of course. Now if a developer purchases the place, the buildings will be bulldozed and Floyd, who has no money, will have to move elsewhere. Pam said that Palmer will take care of him.

Next: 39. 2/8/25: An Embarrassment of Riches