I need to tell you about my father. Because that’s the only way any of this will make sense. And because for most of my life, I didn’t know half of what I’m about to tell you.
His name was Henry Sorensen. Everybody called him Hank. He was born in 1945 on a farm south of Glenwood, Minnesota, the second of seven kids. His father farmed. His grandfather farmed. Hank didn’t want to farm.
Hank wanted to build things.
He started working for a carpenter named Olaf Brandvold when he was fifteen. Summers and weekends. He learned framing, finish work, cabinets, stairs. By the time he was twenty, he was better than Olaf. Olaf said so himself, at Dad’s retirement party in 2014. He was ninety-one then. He stood up with his cane and said, “I taught Hank everything I knew in about three years. Then he spent the next fifty teaching himself the rest.”
Dad was a carpenter for fifty-four years.
He built houses. Garages. Barns. Church pews. Kitchen cabinets. He built the bell tower at Our Savior’s Lutheran in 1979, by hand, with three other men, and it’s still standing. But mostly, he built porches.
I don’t know why porches. He just liked them. He said a porch was the only part of a house that was built for nothing except sitting and talking to your neighbors. He said that was the most important thing a house could do.
He built over three hundred porches in Pope County. I know because he kept a list. In a spiral notebook in his truck. Name. Address. Year. Wood. Three hundred and twelve of them, by the time he retired.
You can’t drive down a street in Glenwood without passing one of my father’s porches.
He wasn’t rich. Carpenters don’t get rich. He made a living. He paid off the house in 1996. He never had a credit card. He drove a Ford pickup from 1992 until 2014, and then he bought another Ford pickup, used, and drove that one until last week.
Kevin was right about that part. He was the cheapest man alive.
But Kevin was wrong about why.
Kevin was born in 1982. I was born in 1979. We grew up in the white house on Third Street with the porch Dad built himself, wraparound, with turned spindles and a swing at the end.
Dad worked all the time. Six days a week, sometimes seven. He’d leave at six in the morning and come home at dark covered in sawdust.
He missed most of our school things. Kevin’s baseball games. My band concerts. He’d try. Sometimes he’d show up in the last inning still in his work clothes and stand behind the backstop.
I didn’t mind much. I was a girl. I spent most of my time with Mom.
Kevin minded.
Kevin minded a lot.
Specialty: Quiet Comebacks & Personal Justice
David Reynolds focuses on stories where underestimated individuals regain control of their lives. His writing centers on measured decisions rather than dramatic outbursts — emphasizing preparation, patience, and the long game. His characters don’t shout; they act.