Read the paragraphs below and answer the questions.
There's an old green Fordson tractor in the back of Grandpa's barn, always covered in cornsacks. When I was very little, I used to go in there, pull off the cornsacks, climb up and drive it all over the farm. I'd be gone all morning sometimes, but they always knew where to find me. I'd be ploughing or tilling or mowing, anything I wanted. It didn't matter to me that the engine didn't work, that one of the iron wheels was missing, that I couldn't even move the steering wheel.
Up there on the tractor, I was a farmer, like my grandpa, and I could go all over the farm, wherever I wanted. When I'd finished, I always had to put the cornsacks back and cover it up. Grandpa said I had to, so that it didn't get dusty. That old tractor, he said, was very important, very special. I knew that already of course, but it wasn't until many years later that I discovered just how important, just how special it was.
1. What kind of job does Grandpa do?
2. How do you know that the boy didn't really drive the tractor all over the farm?
3. Why did the boy have to cover the tractor with cornsacks when he finished playing?
I come from a family of farmers going back generations and generations, but I wouldn't have known much about it if Grandpa hadn't told me. My own mother and father never seemed that interested in family roots, or maybe they just preferred not to talk about them. My mother grew up on the farm. She was the youngest of four sisters, and none of them had stayed on the farm any longer than they'd had to. School took her away to college. College took her off to London, to teaching first, then to meeting my father, a townie through and through, and one who made no secret of his dislike for the countryside and everything to do with it.
4. Why didn't the boy learn much about his farming family history from his parents?
5. What does 'family roots' mean in this passage?
6. Why does it seem odd that the boy's father says he dislikes the countryside in front of Grandpa?
'All right in pictures, I suppose,' he'd say, 'just as long as you don't have to smell it or walk in it.' And he'd say that in front of Grandpa too.
I have always felt they were a little ashamed of Grandpa and his old-fashioned ways, and I never really understood why - until recently, that is. When I found out, it wasn't Grandpa I was ashamed of.
I always loved going down to Devon, to Burrow, his old thatched house at the bottom of a rutty lane. He was born there. He'd never lived anywhere else, nor had any desire to do so. He's the only person I've ever met who seems utterly contented with his own place on earth, with the life he's lived.
7. Who do you think the boy is really ashamed of?
8. How would you best describe the boy's attitude towards his Grandpa and his way of life?