There was a standard petition in the family prayer. Help dad pay his bills. Byron was beginning to realize that fate offered no more guarantees in the little town of a few hundred than it did 190 miles away in a big sparkling city of strangers. The energy crisis. The Iran hostage crisis.
Beige office cubicles.
O.J. Welfare reform. The profound and the banal of the past 25 years. They went looking for work, adventure, a better life, a place to fit in. Often they left a farm or hamlet whose life blood came from agriculture. There were those forced out because farming proved a road to insurmountable debt.