I Object to "What Everybody Knows"

I want to say

When people say

“In the good old days, the farmer inherited the farm”

Well not so simple.

The farmer earned it,

Or bought it,

Or signed a contract with all his older siblings, stating that he could have the farm in return for caring for his bedfast or blind parents until the day they died plus buying their gravestones. He served his parents until he was thirty, and then married the hired girl.

Farmers I know

who “inherited the farm“

regularly write checks to siblings who live in new houses.

They “inherited the farm,”

no they didn't,

they took out a loan of millions of dollars at the age of eighteen, taking responsibility

because their dad was dying of cancer.

The only way I know to give my children an inheritance

Is to sell them land containing an uncountable abundance

Of microbes.

Health.

They'll have to pay for every square foot,

But the price of a square foot of dead soil

Is the same

As the price of a square foot of teeming life.