Writer at Work

When I was growing up in Mississippi, in the 1940s and '50s, my father worked as a traveling salesman. And you might say we--my family--lived in a world dominated by work. My father had gained his job during the heart of the Depression, in 1935, and kept it until his dying day, in 1960. It was a source of considerable pride to him--not to mention relief, and the sponsor of most of our family's material well-being--that he had one job through the Depression, the World War, and all of the 1950s...