Introduction

Last summer I happened to be crossing the
plains of Iowa in a season of intense heat, and it
was my good fortune to have for a traveling
companion James Quayle Burden -- Jim Bur-
den, as we still call him in the West. He and I are
old friends -- we grew up together in the same
Nebraska town -- and we had much to say to
each other. While the train flashed through
never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country
towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak
groves wilting in the sun, we sat in the observa-
tion car, where the woodwork was hot to the
touch and red dust lay deep over everything.
The dust and heat, the burning wind, reminded
us of many things. We were talking about what
it is like to spend one's childhood in little towns
like these, buried in wheat and corn, under stim-
ulating extremes of climate: burning summers
when the world lies green and billowy beneath
a brilliant sky, when one is fairly stifled in vege-
tation, in the color and smell of strong weeds
and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little
snow, when the whole country is stripped bare
and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one
who had not grown up in a little prairie town

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