I was born big and jaundiced (and ugly) on February 18, 1926, in a farmhouse four miles southwest of Whiteville, N.C., and two miles northwest of New Hope Elementary School and New Hope Baptist Church. At that time, my sisters were two and six, my father W. M. Ammons thirty-one, and my mother Lucy Della McKee Ammons thirty-eight. My grandfather Randolph had died three years before. My older sister remembers him. One day just before he died, he was sitting on the porch, and he gave her an apple. My grandmother Eliza Williams Ammons was living, but I don’t know how old she was. She died when I was eleven. In 1927, I was one. In 1929 a traveling photographer took a picture of me in my navy suit standing in front of the blue hydrangea. I remember that. The next year, my eighteen-month-old brother Elbert died. I remember that. The next year, a brother was born dead. I remember the day of his birth. It was raining hard. My mother screamed and my grandmother walked back and forth crying out with prayer. In 1931 my dog was shot far away from home. He was yellow-brown and came home many times thereafter in my dreams. In 1932 I went to first grade. The next year my big sister fought for me when a cousin said I hadn’t done the printing myself. It was beautiful. We had rough times for years. In 1939 I was graduated from New Hope Elementary School. I gave the valedictorian address. In 1943 I was graduated from Whiteville High School. I did not give the valedictorian address. I worked in the shipyard at Wilmington for a while. My boss and I installed fuel pumps on their bases in the bellies of freighters. I went into the navy in 1944, spent some months in the South Pacific, and got out in 1946. I went to Wake Forest College on the GI Bill. My majors were from time to time premed, biology, chemistry, general science. I taught first and married in 1949. I was principal of the three-teacher Hatteras Elementary School, and I married Phyllis Plumbo of Northfield, N.J. My mother died in 1950. By 1952 I had studied English for three semesters at University of California at Berkeley. For twelve years thereafter, I lived in South Jersey where I worked mainly with a glass manufacturing firm. In September 1964 I came to Cornell University. My father died in 1966. My son John Randolph Ammons is seven years old.