Lost in West Texas

"I want to hear about such folks as my father and how he knows how to make cement, not by recipe, but by something in his bones. I want to hear how my grandfather learned to plow a straight furrow and why even older men always called him Mister. I want to know all of the reasons why, those years ago, my mother cried when the tomatoes in her garden twisted and died."

Trying to find out such things, Jim Corder leads us through the ravines of the Croton Breaks, around to the back side of the Do...