An Unintended Gift

Chester Dane

My father was a disappointed man. He graduated from college into the teeth of the Great Depression with a degree in chemistry. He landed a job, married my mother and soon found himself out of work. In those hard times, the last-hired, first-fired doctrine ruled.

After a long struggle to find a job that didn’t disappear out from under him, Dad was finally forced to accept work on his brother-in-law’s farm in Minnesota. He had grown up on a poor southern-California farm, so he knew f...