Part 2: Chapter 2 Summary

As he polishes his shoes military-style, Shep Campbell ruminates about his life growing up as the son of a wealthy, divorced mother who sent him to prep schools and sought to civilize him into the cultivated upper classes of the East Coast. But Shep is a rebel and resents his mother's efforts to soften him. Instead, he chooses to go into the army, where he is a member of a famous airborne unit and receives a big promotion then attends a state college in the west to become a mechanical engineer. He wants nothing to do with the manners or mores of the upper class, contenting himself to identify with the blue collar working class folks on America. He meets Milly at college and has a son before they're married, then takes a job with a machinery plant near Phoenix, where...