I walked into the house from the front porch. The rickety old screen door slams behind me.

Out of the mist of time I'm at the kitchen table with my whole family. It's in the early part of May 1954. Mama has the newest little Smith in her lap as she spoons beans into blue speckled aluminum plates for the toddlers. They sit on the old wooden bench with three more of us. Nine Smith children along with Mama and Daddy makes for crowding. Six sit in ladderbacks all scrounched together.

I hear spoons and forks clatter, coffee cups dinging against saucers, everybody talking at once and somehow I...