He was possibly twenty-four—a “produce man” at the Clarence Saunders grocery in Hot Springs, where she lived with her parents. It was a small chain of stores, now gone. There is a photograph I have: my father, standing in the store with the clerks—wooden bins all around, brimming with onions, potatoes, carrots, apples. It is an old-looking place. He is wearing his white bib apron and staring, slightly smiling for the camera. His dark hair is neatly combed. He is ordinarily handsome, competent-appearing, alert, a young man on the way to somewhere better—a career, not merely employment. It is the twenties. He has come to the city from the country, equipped with farm virtues. Was he nervous in this picture? Excited? Did he fear he might fail? Why, one wonders, had he left tiny Atkins, where he was from? The world’s pickle capital. All of it is unknown to me. His brother, Elmo—called “Pat” for the Irish lineage—lived in Little Rock, but soon went to the navy. His sister was at home with a burgeoning family. Possibly, by the time of this picture, he had met my mother and fallen in love. Dates are no more clear than reasons.

Not long after, though, he took a better job managing the Liberty Stores in Little Rock—another grocery chain. He joined the Masons. Though soon, robbers would enter one of his places of business, wave guns around, take money, hit my father in the head, and depart. After which he was let go and never told precisely why. Possibly he’d said something he shouldn’t have. I don’t know how people saw him. As a bumpkin? A hick? A mother’s boy? Not brave enough? Possibly as a character to whom the great Chekhov would ascribe a dense-if-not-necessarily-rich interior life. A young man adrift within his circumstances.

Time then, and another job—in Hot Springs, again. He was married to my mother now. The thirties were beginning. Then another, even better job came—selling laundry starch for a company out of Kansas City. The Faultless Company. I don’t know how he gained such a job. The company still exists in KC. To this day there are pictures of my father on the walls in the offices, with other salesmen of that time. 1938.