The ‘Little House’ books gave me a place to escape. This New York farm took me there for real.

Holding a crystal prism up to my left eye, I moved the glass so that the image gave me the illusion that the furniture in the room had disappeared. It was just light refraction, but I hoped it might help me slip through a wrinkle in time. I was trying to leave 1984, trying to escape to 1870.

My house in 1984 was full of screaming, thrown dishes, and beatings. A Victorian-age farm in upstate New York, or another in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, sounded like a much better place to be.

Yes, Virginia, the splotch is real. This is the part you’ve been waiting for. ‘Farmer Boy’ readers will remember the tensest scene in the book.

It didn’t work then, but I got where I wanted to be