I was born in a four-room frame house in the shadow of a cement mill. The mill, at the edge of a small northern-Illinois town called Oglesby, provided the houses for the families of the men who worked there. My father was a chemist at the mill, so throughout my childhood, the dusty, old mill filled my horizon.

How I loved it all! The huffing, banging trains delivering coal and carrying away cement. The deep-bellied whistles from the mill itself, announcing that my father would soon come walking home. The wide green yard, the luxuriant woods that took up where the yard left off, even the column of smoke that puffed across my sky from the tall stack.

My mother was a taciturn woman who loved babies, and she surrounded me—and my brother, Willis, who was two years older—with an unspoken but utterly solid love.

There happened to be a goodly pack of boys for Willis to run with, but few—often no—girls for me. But I entertained myself easily in my mother's cozy world and can remember no discontent from those early years. I don't know what it was like for Willis to leave this idyllic existence for school. For me, it was like being cast out of paradise.

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