Book excerpt: This eccentric title recalls a collection of tales first told to grandchildren at bedtime. Each chapter begins with a fun-to-read farmer-boy story from the 1940s, an era before industrial farming when horses, cows, and chickens were still members of the family. These anecdotes each launch a theme that splashes down with further development in later decades of life. Diverse topics include imaginative play, construction crew humor, animal intelligence, contemplative prayer and journal writing, rural and urban farming, communal wisdom, and affordable housing, along with a few serious pranks and the prophetic mischief that follows. This memoir is also a confession in the pattern of Augustine, reflecting on God's in-breaking initiatives and the writer's emerging sense of calling in lifelong conversation with Jesus. Its stories offer a series of curiosity-driven on-ramps into eight decades of transformative experiences for curious souls to ponder an open-eyed faith and a communal way of life for the long haul.