Richard Ford

writing these two memoirs—thirty years apart—I have permitted some inconsistencies to

Lights in our small duplex on Congress Street in Jackson are switched on bright.

Son, son, son. . . .” I am in the middle of everything.

He confers—they confer—the administration of the week’s events, including my supervision, onto her.

Which is true and, to that extent, is fine with me.

HIS LARGE MALLEABLE, FLESHY FACE was given to smiling. His first face was always the smiling one.

The long Irish lip. The transparent blue eyes—my eyes.

A dandified farmer with a gold-headed cane in a small Arkansas town.

My father did not project “a strength,” even as a young man.

Rather, he projected a likable, untried quality, a susceptibility to being over-looked. Deceived. Except by my mother