I was born in Rensselaer and lived there until I was thirteen, when my father, fifty-seven, retired, sold his newspaper, and became a fruit-grower in beautiful Rogue River Valley in Oregon. But frost, hail, wind, blight, San Jose scale, codling moth (all terms of horror to me to this day) and the tantrums of the market brought the sheriff on to our front porch. He did not actually get inside, but the cold wind of poverty rattled the windows and gave us the scare of our lives. I resolved that whatever I did in life, first and foremost it must make us a bountiful living.
