https://www.amazon.com/Three-Lives-Richie-OMalley-Thriller-ebook/dp/B087SRJP38

Over in the corner of the barn we stored some old farm tools. Hay rakes and bailers and mowers, an eclectic collection of old parts and once red and yellow and blue painted, now rusted iron. Unk walked over to this equipment placed his hand on the rusty metal then to the the wheels of the hay wagon. Even in the dead of winter the scents of this barn were always the same, a mix of dried grass, burned grass, mold, grease and cow shit. The odor was somewhat deadened by cold air, but it was there, lingering.

Unk walked up these machines and and touched them with a reverence.

He turned and looked at me and said, “These machines, this equipment was built by a good man, good men who went to work at seven in the morning every day and brought their sandwiches in bags and on weekends they watched baseball and drank beer and they took their families on picnics on Sundays. When they died people went to their funerals and genuinely wept because men like this would be missed in a community, the community was somehow diminished by the passing of men like these. They built things that were good and strong. These old machines are their legacy. They still work and do the job they were designed to do long after these men have passed. We will never be men like this we will never understand men like this. We are another type of men. There is no good in men like us. Sometimes I come out to this barn just to be alone by this equipment and try to understand what it must’ve been like to be the man who built such things. What will our legacy be, nephew?”

With that he turned toward the barn door, stopping to wait for me as I let his words sink in.

—from The Three Lives of Richie O’Malley