Now and then

Man lives by bread alone, and the ultimate source of bread is the baker’s van: peace matters more than honour and can be preserved by jeering at colonels and reading newspapers. Sometimes I think this phrase is the perfect summary of the last ten to twenty years.
Around here, the Memorial Day remembrances were a timely reminder of the war years, when everyone was acutely conscious of where our bread — and our vegetables, gasoline, rubber, metal, nylon, and everything else — came from. These days, my garden is a hobby. Sixty years ago, it would have been a Victory Garden.