Hruska Family Website
"A Time to Change" is a 1965 short story by Donna about Jeremy Eagle, a farm worker struggling with unpaid wages and a troubled marriage, who finally decides to demand what he's owed and start fresh in the city with his wife Etheline.
This story beautifully captures the nostalgia of home food preservation and family traditions from the 1960s perspective, contrasting the communal experience of canning peaches and making apple butter with the convenience of modern grocery shopping.
Donna's 1960s educational article demonstrates how teaching children to write haikus and quatrains can rekindle their natural love of poetry while improving their grammar, spelling, and creative expression skills.
The story is a charming memoir by Donna about coal buckets and their role in her childhood and adolescence, from eating tangerines over them during Christmas to using one for physical therapy after breaking her elbow.
In this hilariously honest essay, Donna warns would-be seamsters about the hidden perils of home sewing—from children who treat fabric layouts as walking paths to the dreaded "home sewer's trap" where you become so discerning about clothing construction that only expensive garments will satisfy you.
In The Haunting, Donna reflects on how the haunting images of starving Biafran children forced her to confront the gap between sympathy and action, awakening her to the reality that children are starving not just far away, but close to home—and that good intentions mean little without meaningful compassion.
This is a humorous essay by Donna about the progression through various cars, from a traded lawnmower Packard to eventually getting a proper station wagon.
Everyone in the extended Hruska family tries to make it to the farm on the third weekend in October every year, but it has occurred to me lately that maybe some of the younger generations may not know why the farm exists and why it is so important to show up. Maybe a little background …
In this second part of the story, Donna talks about the Oshkosh Air Show, heading to Mexico, and a few hairy experiences flying.
Donna always wanted to learn to fly. Here's the first of her two part story. She talks about the Civil Air Patrol and their first airplane.
