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us that our Ruth has now entered the beautiful and special phase of womanhood,” Connie had written. “I know she’d enjoy hearing from Dana about her own experiences in that regard.”
    My brother, Ray, had practically spit up his juice, hearing this. “The special phase of womanhood!” he said, gagging.
    “Like I’d really write a letter to some girl I hardly know,” I said. About menstruation, of all things.
    We made fun of the Plank family, if we thought of them at all, which wasn’t that often, though there was always the Christmas card, and oddly enough, Val always sent them a Christmas letter—which was a linoleum print she made, sometimes accompanied by the photograph George took of us each year, using a timer on the camera so he could be in it too. We even paid a visit to the farm stand most summers, usually around the time of Ruth’s and my birthday, which was strawberry season.
    I think it actually mattered to Val more than she liked to admit, to know what this family was doing, and what they thought of us. Connie Plank was like that kind of hungry and determined cat that shows up at your door with such persistence—not all the time, but often enough—that you finally decide you might as well start feeding it.
    “I feel sorry for Edwin,” Val said one time. “He goes along with that woman, but you know she drives him crazy. He should never have married someone like her.”
    But here was the oddest thing: somewhere along the line, on one of those Christmases when the letter from the Planks arrived as it always did, with the same reports (how many calves were born that spring, the girls’ education, church events and the annual bazaar, followed by the yearly thanks to God for all his many blessings), it occurred to me that if the day ever came when Connie ceased to write, I would miss the presence of the Planks in our life. I had come to enjoy, in particular, our summer visits to the farm stand. I liked the dependability of the farm, for one thing—the fact that there was one place in my life—one place only, perhaps—that was always going to be there, where nothing much was ever going to change.
    And I loved learning about the farm—those times on our strawberry season visits when (busy as he was, and he was always busy) Edwin Plank would drop what he was doing and show me some new development. He explained to me the reason he kept two kinds of cows—Guernseys for cream, Holsteins for milk. He was trying out a certain kind of Chinese bean with seeds brought to him by his one Chinese customer. (“Chinaman” was the term he used. This was the early sixties. That was what you said in those days.)
    Another time he had reached into his pocket and pulled out for me a potato he said he’d noticed while digging up one of the hills.
    “What do you make of this?” he said. “Darned thing’s the spitting image of Lyndon Johnson.”
    Looking back, it was surprising how he seemed to recognize, early on, that I was a person who’d be interested in such things. I remember one year he was excited (as excited as a person like Edwin ever appears) over a new variety of butter-and-sugar corn that blended the best of both worlds: the flavor of yellow corn with the sweetness and crunchiness of white corn. Another time he told me the story of the Big Boy tomato, the first real commercial hybrid variety, developed by the son of a Ukrainian farmer, that was brought out by the Burpee company the year before my birth and Ruth’s—1949.
    “Imagine thinking up a whole new vegetable,” he told me, as he handed me a sample.
    “Now that would be a legacy to leave your grandchildren,” he said.
    Though I was still young when we had these conversations—once a year at most, walking the rows, while back at the house Connie served Val coffee from the percolator, not instant—I liked our visits. I appreciated Edwin Plank’s sober reflection on the pride and comfort he found, early mornings in the barn, milking the