I buried my hands in dirt today, and it felt like shaking hands with a ghost. This land has been in my family since Eisenhower was president.

I plowed it behind a mule when I was twelve, then behind a rusted-out John Deere in the summer of ’68, when the air stank of tear gas and kids with long hair screamed on the evening news about a war I didn’t understand.

Through every headline, every president, every broken promise, this land stayed steady. Rows of corn didn’t give a damn about Washington. Wheat bent the same way in the wind, red or blue in power.

Now they tell me it’s not worth planting anymore.

The co-op man came out last week in his shiny boots, boots too clean for a farm. He ran the numbers, said the price of soy won’t keep up with fuel, that I’d be better off leasing to some energy company for solar panels. He talked like it was progress, like I should be grateful the future had room for an old man like me, if I’d just step aside.

Step aside.

I remember when this town was loud. Summer nights meant the high school field lights blazing, kids playing ball till their arms gave out. Pickup trucks lined up by the fence, radios tuned to Hank or maybe Springsteen if someone younger got the dial. You could smell burgers smoking on makeshift grills, hear fathers yelling advice like gospel, see mothers fanning themselves with church bulletins even though the Lord wasn’t anywhere near that field.

Now the bleachers rot. The field is weeds. Kids drive an hour to some indoor complex in the city. No one stays here anymore, not unless they’re stuck.

I married Elaine in ’72. She made pies that people fought over at church suppers. She died on a Tuesday in March, fifteen years ago, while I was out checking calves. I came back to a still kitchen, the rolling pin laid out like she’d just stepped away. Since then, it’s been just me, the dog, and these acres. The dog’s gone now too. Some mornings I still wake thinking I hear his nails on the kitchen floor.

I walk the fields alone. Every furrow holds a memory. I can still hear my father cussing when the combine broke down in ’59, still see my brother grinning the day he shipped out, pretending he wasn’t scared. He never came home. Vietnam swallowed him whole, like it did so many.

Folks say farmers are tough, salt of the earth. Truth is, we break like anyone else. We just do it quietly, out here where no one’s watching.

Yesterday I sat on the porch and watched the sun go down over the west pasture. The sky was the kind of red that makes you forget politics, debt, pain. I thought about how many sunsets I’ve seen right there, boots propped on the railing, cold beer sweating in my hand. My grandkids don’t visit much—they’re too busy chasing something called opportunity. I don’t begrudge them. The world moved on. It just forgot to take me with it.

They call men like me stubborn. Maybe they’re right. But I know what stubborn built. It built barns that still stand when banks collapse. It built suppers stretched from nothing but potatoes and faith. It built families that sang around radios before TVs made us stare instead of speak.

I don’t need speeches about change. I’ve lived through more change than the boy in the co-op boots can imagine. But I’ll tell you this: a man’s worth ain’t measured by how fast he lets go of what made him.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up, pour coffee into the same chipped mug I’ve used since ’81, and I’ll walk out to the field. Maybe I’ll plant. Maybe I won’t. The world says the numbers don’t add up, that dirt isn’t profit anymore. But when I press my hand into the soil, I still feel life pushing back.

Maybe I’m just a relic, a shadow of the America that was. Or maybe I’m the reminder it still needs.

Either way, when the last row is gone and the last barn falls, I’ll still be here, in the land, in the dirt, in the stubborn memory of what we once were.