1937 the Ohio in flood my parents have not yet met my father is a young man trying to work out a way to avoid being a farmer and just beginning to fail at one alternative after another he has not yet reached the last one and failed at it too which will force him to show his true excellence my mother is still in school and probably already as angrily unsatisfied as she will be later probably as funny and beguiling as greedy of attention as sharp-tongued and sad as eager to tell a story probably already dreaming of mountains and cities far to the south of them another Ohio lays on top of the first together they escape the banks that have always defined "Ohio River" and run over the surrounding lands ruining homes and scraping away crops killing and exiling many for ages people have preferred to live by rivers it offers many advantages especially as settlements grow larger they crowd their houses near the water they send and receive by it they get their news off it and from time to time this happens and they get their sorrow too what did my mother and father hear about it? a disaster so far away it couldn't touch them but close enough there must have been much talk probably their knowledge of it was slight and quickly drifted to the back of the mind life can be hard enough to account for without worrying about others' heartaches