Opening paragraphs...............

   When I visit the back corners of my life again after so long
a time, littlest things jump out first.  The oilcloth, tiny blue
windmills on white squares, worn to colorless smears at our
four places at the kitchen table.  Our father's pungent coffee,
so strong it was almost ambulatory, which he gulped down
from suppertime until bedtime and then slept serenely as a
sphinx.  The pesky wind, the one element we could count
on at Marias Coulee, whistling into some weather-cracked
cranny of this house, as if invited in.
-Ivan Doig, The Whistling Season