J.R. Ferguson is a retired farmer. His acreage has been leased to a young couple he once rescued from the muddy access road that runs through his cornfield. As a result, he examines the road after every heavy rain both for stranded lovers and to examine the road's condition.

One day, he finds trash in the form of various kinds of medication bottles strewn on the side of the road. With his boots sinking in the soft mud, he collects the litter and returns with the bottles, some of which are labeled "Low Dose Aspirin", something he takes daily since his heart attack. Examining the tablets, he determines that even though the bottles seem to vary, the drug is obviously the same. Knowing how to pinch a penny, he empties each of the bottles into one of his deceased wife’s old canning jars and starts to take one each day. Still grieving his wife’s death and his daughter Carol’s recent move into town, he goes to work fixing up the old farmhouse in the hope that his daughter may one day return and raise a family on the old farm. In the process of making substantial repairs, he notices small changes in himself, attributing them to his increased activity while refurbishing the old homestead, only to discover months later that the tablets he’d been taking are not low-dose aspirin but an experimental drug that reverses aging.