[uplifting brass music]
- Lyle Link: My father believed
that any man that needed a vacation
should get a different job.
Because for him, those 110 acres
was the whole world and he needed nothing else.
But farming wasn't for me.
I wasn't happy picking corn or shoveling manure.
Although milking cows was good because I could sing opera
in the barn milking cows, and that was great.
- Carly Dreher: It sounds like you were the black sheep.
- Lyle: Yeah, I drove my poor father nuts.
He couldn't understand me.
I remember his saying one day,
"Son, you cannot think the thoughts you think."
My brother was totally a farmer.
He never made another footstep
that my father hadn't made before,
and I couldn't walk in my father's footsteps
to save my soul.
So the day came, I left.
- Carly: Tell me about how you met Grandma.
- Lyle: She came to the church that we attended
and I said to her,
"Someday, I'm going to ask you to marry me."
And I took her hand and it went from there.
- Carly: You and Grandma had so many adventures in your lives.
- Lyle: You bet.
- Carly: Your honeymoon was just driving across the country.
- Lyle: Yes, I had a '36 Chevy
and I was able to lay a mattress in the back seat.
And we spent our first night in that car
on a bluff over the Mississippi River.
My father, by the way, did not approve
of that kind of outrageous living.
But I was willing to break new ground.
And your grandma really was ready to break new ground.
- Carly: Yes.
I know that it's hard to talk about Grandma,
but what made you love her so much?
- Lyle: I don't know.
I don't know.
It was something I couldn't help.
- Carly: Hmm.
- Lyle: We have been in love for almost 70 years.
And she now died and all I can say is that
life was so beautiful.
- Carly: Is. - Lyle: It is so beautiful.
I'm terribly, terribly lonesome. [sniffling]
- Carly: She was pretty amazing.
- Lyle: Very, yeah.
- Carly: Do you have any regrets, Grandpa?
- Lyle: No, no.
We lived a wonderful life.
I think when we got married, we'd made all new tracks.
And we never stepped in any old tracks.
I want you to do the same thing.
Live with courage.
[gentle brass music]