NO RADIO; no movies; limited reading—little diversion between the hard day just past and the hard day just ahead. “Living was just drudgery then,” says Carroll Smith of Blanco. “Living—just living—was a problem. No lights. No plumbing. Nothing. Just living on the edge of starvation. That was farm life for us. God, city people think there was something fine about it. If they only knew …”