Opportunities in Alabama Agriculture

<p>This is the story of Benjamin Reuben a junior member of a large and highly uneducated family lodged in one of the more sterile regions of Alabama. Before The Great War (1914-1918) he acquired a woman and a parcel of farmland through forced marriage. Adept at nothing but spelling blessed and burdened by a poetic imagination but starved of culture the young insomniac toiled sedulously for years doing most of his plowing at night. Finally to save his farm he became a rural postman. At last in old age he and the woman drifted on down to the Edge of the world a small distance from their tattered house. He died thinking himself a failure by worldly reckoning overlooking his six children and growing brood of grandchildren including one Lee Pefley the preceptor of another Reuben who was destined to turn the world around. </p>