Member-only story
FICTION
The Quiet Farmer
The stories we might have heard about autism in history
Joseph Whittredge found profound satisfaction in the ordered patterns of farm life.
By his mid-twenties, he had established a homestead on family land with carefully structured daily routines that seldom varied. He rose before dawn — his sensitivity to the earliest morning light serving as a natural alarm. The morning air felt cleaner against his skin than the heavy afternoon heat that often made his clothing unbearable.
His livestock responded well to his methodical, predictable handling, and his farm produced consistently good yields. But his neighbors often noticed oddities.
[New here? Click to read this full story]
Joseph organized his barn with a precision that neighbors respected, but found peculiar. Tools hung in specific places, categorized by function and frequency of use. He could sense when a hoe or pitchfork had been returned slightly out of alignment, the visual disruption as jarring to him as a shout in a quiet room.
At mealtimes, Joseph ate the same foods in the same order. His wife Martha had learned from his mother to serve his plate at the same time each day. She soon learned that certain textures and tastes — particularly anything with…
