I come from, in the first place,

The panicked loins of a couple of nice young people who'd just heard that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and were scared to death--although, really, if they had thought about it, they'd have known that, in their particular situation, they had nothing to be scared of. My grandfather, after all, was the head of the the local draft board, and he had hired my father, his son-in-law, to work on his wheat ranch (as we call large wheat farms in the Far West) as an Essential Worker. Cushy. Likewise--and I recall being aware of this at the moment of my conception--my paternal grandfather had never in his life hit an animal, or a child, in anger; and, what is important here, had forbidden his sons, and his sons-in-law, to do so either. It was, I knew, for me, the perfect place to be born and to spend my early childhood.