'My childhood was surrounded by a communal daydreaming, the richest sort of imaginative talk, that began this way - in work, in the misery of work, to make the work bearable and even pleasant. Such talk ranged all the way from a kind of sensuous realism to utter fantasy, but because the bounds of possibility were almost always ignored I would say that the impetus was always that of fantasy. I have heard crowds of men, weary and hungry and hot near the end of a day's work, construct long elaborate conversations on the subject of what would be good to eat and drink, dwelling at length and with subtlety on the taste and the hotness or the coldness of various dishes and beverages, and on combinations of dishes and beverages, the menu lengthening far beyond the capacity of any living stomach. I knew one man who every year got himself through the ordeal of the tobacco harvest by elaborating from one day to the next the fantasy of an epical picnic and celebration which was always to occur except, richly, marvelously, in the minds of his listeners.'
Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound, p.44.
