Chapters 1 and 2 Summary and Analysis

Russell Baker's memoir describes his childhood in rural Virginia, his youth growing up in the Great Depression, and his young adulthood in Baltimore with his mother. Russell's reminiscences are centered on his relationship with his mother, a single parent through much of his youth, who eventually grows senile and unable to tell him about her own life growing up.

In chapter one, Russell Baker describes his eighty-year-old mother, who is in a hospital after the last bad fall she will experience. His mother is senile, and she lives in her memories. She sometimes thinks Russell is still a little boy, sometimes that she is a still little girl. One morning, she phones Russell to ask if he's going to her funeral that day. Russell knows his mother as a woman who always speaks her mind, saying it's too bad...