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The rhythm of rural life during the 1950s and 1960s comes alive through the eyes of a Grundy County, Iowa, boy who grew up to become a newspaper journalist and farm editor. An idle pastime of batting rocks over the barn or his experiences in a one-room country school or a third-grade debate over whose fathers had the best brand of farm tractors are told in this eclectic collection of some of Lawn Griffiths' most popular "Rural at Random" weekly farm columns in the Waterloo Courier during the 1970s. The award-winning writer tells about driving calves to spring pasture, the mayhem of scattering rats after hog houses were moved, transferring pullets into hen houses in the fall and the death of a beloved blacksmith who was always ready to weld broken machinery parts.