Burgess, Philip J.

I was raised on a hardscrabble ranch in Montana on the Missouri river, and attended a little one-room schoolhouse just down the road from our place. High school was fifteen miles of bad road away in a town which, with its thousand souls, telephones, and indoor plumbing, was an exotic and somewhat alien place to me. I remember reading by kerosene lamps, pumping water by hand, and outdoor toilets. I was in college before I became comfortable with using a telephone. As the oldest boy, I felt compelled to take some of the pressure off of my father. He tried to protect me from having to grow up too...