“Latchkey” Kids

There’s a latch on an old building on our farm and the other day when I looked over at it, I thought of “latchkey kids.” That is what so many of us were growing up in the 1980s and 90s. 

On the farm I grew up on, there was another latch on an old door of the “milk house.” That building was later transformed into dad’s little shop. I used to ride my yellow, hand-me-down bike with the black banana seat all around the old milk house turned shop building with the latch on the door. I would pull up to it to explore its contents and inside I found a heavy duty vice with an anvil (that I messed around with but shouldn’t have), various tools, grease guns, and a nail pounded in the wall with the key to our farmhouse hanging on it. 

I knew where the key was because I was home alone a lot by myself or with my younger brothers. We were among the latchkey kids, in our case, farm kids too. We were kids making our way while our parents did what they had to do to keep things financially going. 

The expectation from our parents was simple: we all needed to do what we needed to do to help. Helping for me meant babysitting, washing dishes, helping with laundry, cleaning house, helping clean up the shelterbelt, hauling irrigation pipe, caring for neighbor kids and this and that. I was doing what was asked of me and what I saw needed to get done.  

This doing also included heading out to the ol’ milk house and getting that key to the main house located at the center of “farm city.” That “farm city” on an “island” out in the middle of everywhere and nowhere. The farm was life. We weren’t in FFA or 4-H because we had work to do and there simply wasn’t time for the other stuff. That’s just the way it was: work, play, school, sleep, work, play, and work. 

During our formative years, we were alone a lot and responsible for ourselves and siblings. Money was needed. Mom and dad were absent, and earning incomes so we could get an education off the farm someday. Also, so we could simply afford life on the farm right then and there. Their off-farm incomes as teachers also ensured dad could break even farming some years and we could keep progressing along. 

Many of us “latchkey kids” are all grown up now watching this time in history, and scratching our heads going, “where’s the common sense?” Reality doesn’t elude us. We know not one institution, or government, is going to fully come around and help us in the end.

That’s why the latchkey kids are the silent superpower. We’re the middle, working class. Or, we’re like some of those tough farming years were. We’re poor and breaking even maybe, but finding our way. We’re doing what we have to do. We’re doing what we’ve always done. 

Because we have been doing that our entire lives. Grabbing keys from old “milk houses” and running a good portion of the entire household from age six, eight, and onward. We were driving tractors, heading to work, roguing fields, doing chores before and after school, stacking hay bales, shucking corn, you name it. We rolled out of bed, no questions asked, and did it. 

We adapted and were unnoticed a lot of times, neglected sometimes, abused other times. Behind the latches were a lot of stressed, chaotic lives just trying to get by. We’re still here though, and whoever the leaders supposedly are on this absolutely nuts national stage, we’re the ones on the front lines who will keep it all together because we have, we can, and we will. 

We also don’t think we’re the best or the only people, race, or generation that matters. We see generations coming up the ranks and we’re being real with them. We don’t want them to go down the gutters we went to for attention, community, and just a place to call home. 

We’re wiser now. We’ve “been there, done that.” We want to spare others by sharing our failures and successes. We want to share what we have survived through and learned.

We will also love you. But it’s the tough sort of informed love the country and world need right now. A little worn out love like the old shed that inspired this story. Come visit us. We’re in our 30s, 40s, and 50s, now. Some of us are getting gray hair and dim eyes. But I assure you, we see the problems clearly and we know what we need to do. 

If you feel moved to do so, come visit this latchkey kid, (who is now an adult) for a “Hope Stories for the Heartland” book signing at Max’s Golden Grounds in York, Neb. from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Nov. 2. The book is written from the perspective of a 1980s farm kid who is trying to save the soil, water, and other latchkey rural and urban kids who are adults now running farms, businesses, and families. 

Let’s talk real. let’s talk about hope and do what we have to do. Because we’re latchkey kids. We can do it all.

 Copyright© 2024 All Rights Reserved, Kerry Hoffschneider