I want to say something about my husband right here.
Because a lot of people who heard about that boat later thought they knew exactly who he was.
They didn’t.
Rick has been a lineman for the rural electric co-op for thirty years.
He started at twenty-five as a groundman. Worked his way up through all the apprentice years to journeyman. For most of that time, he climbed wooden poles with steel hooks strapped to his boots and a leather belt around the pole.
When the ice storms came, he went. He went on Christmas Eve. He went on Tyler’s birthday.
One winter he was gone for eleven days straight. He came home with frostbite on two fingers and slept for a day and a half on the couch with his boots still on.
The summer of the derecho, he worked sixteen-hour days for three weeks. Setting new poles in fields where the corn was flattened like somebody had come through with an iron. He came home so tired he ate supper standing up at the counter, then went straight to bed.
In thirty-two years of marriage, he’d never asked for one thing for himself.
Not a new truck. Not a hunting trip to Montana with the guys. Not even a new recliner, when the old one tipped him sideways every time he leaned back.
His father was the reason.
Walt Schmitz farmed two hundred acres south of town. And he believed that a man who wanted something for himself was a man who was getting soft.
When Rick was fourteen, he saved up all summer from detasseling corn and bought himself a used Honda minibike. Red. Two hundred dollars.
The next spring, his father sold it at the farm sale. Without asking him. Without even telling him first.
Rick came home from school and it was just gone.
He told me that story once. The first year we were married. Sitting on the porch steps at his parents’ place after Sunday dinner.
He never told it again.
But I remembered it.
Ethan Blake is a skilled Creative Content Specialist with a talent for crafting engaging and thought-provoking narratives. With a strong background in storytelling and digital content creation, Ethan brings a unique perspective to his role at TheArchivists, where he curates and produces captivating content for a global audience.
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