Great Regulars: [Ted] Kooser, however, uses the setting

as a frame, moving back and forth from past to present, describing how a way of life has been eclipsed.

The author's grandfather was a farmer turned service station operator who bought his first car in the 1920s. "[A]s he paid for his first tank of gas," his grandson writes, "he understood at once that the days of sustainable agriculture were over, that the wealth of his farmland would gradually drain away to the east."

from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: 'Lights on a Ground of Darkness' by Ted Kooser

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