When I decided to read E.B. White (b 1899 d 1985), I had many choices. Children’s books like “Charlotte’s Web” and “Stuart Little” came to mind. I went to the library and checked them out, also the audiobook of “Charlotte’s Web,” read by E.B. White.

Then I remembered two collections for adult readers: “One Man’s Meat” and “The Second Tree from the Corner.” I started with “One Man’s Meat,” published as a book in 1944. There are 55 articles, published first in magazines The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine from 1938 to 1943. They are in order according to the calendar.

In the first entry, “Removal,” dated July 1938, E.B. and his wife Katharine are selling their house in the city and moving to a farm on the coast of Maine. He refers to it as a salt water farm.

He writes about everyday aspects of the move like setting a rug straight on the floor and adjusting how a watercolor hangs on the wall. Then he brings up another subject he wants to talk about. He writes about the change from viewing things in person and then from afar — television and radio. He believes that television “is going to be the test of the modern world” (p. 2 in the 1966 Perennial Library paperback). He’d rather be a middle-aged man who every day walks around his country place, takes care of the animals, and goes fishing with his son. Most of the writing has some reference to the pigs, sheep, geese, horses and chickens that also live on the farm.

It took me awhile to understand the title “Fro-Joy,” written in January 1940. First, he’s in a garage where a radio is on while his car is getting fixed. Then he ruminates: a generation ago (for him), rural areas were close to small towns that had stores, doctors, and movies. At that time people bought bread from a neighbor for 25 cents a loaf. (We just received our two loaves of homemade bread from a friend who lives in Cottonwood.)

Ice cream was brought by a truck with brand name Fro-Joy noted on it; the driver had 209,587 safe miles under his belt. (I must admit to E.B. White that I looked up Fro-Joy online. Fro-Joy meant Frozen Joy, and the company made Babe Ruth baseball cards in 1928).

In 1940 “the automobile is at the bottom of every plot” (p. 122). One room schoolhouses have given way to a larger school farther away, and school buses take children to school. Where E.B. lives now, students can still walk to school … 4 miles each way. E.B. White moved to the country so he could stay in the past as much as he could.

In “Spring” (April 1941) we read more about all the animals E.B. White takes care of daily on his farm. He has 254 chicks that must be kept at the right temperature, about 88 degrees. There is a hog expecting her babies, and he wonders if she will have seven again this time. He refers to his trip out to the barn as “magical.” On the way he sees starlings and flickers. The lambs get all dirty when they go out for a “spring dunk.”

Several of the articles include references to WW II. In his foreword he explains the quandary of writing about daily life in Maine when a war is going on. But he writes “I have begun to receive letters from soldiers overseas assuring me that there is a positive value to them in the memory of peace and of home” (p. vii). They must be reading the magazines his articles are in.

In “Songbirds” (April 1942) he wants to report on the birds he and his wife are seeing. They’ve in the past used their binoculars to help identify birds, but “we sent our binoculars to England year before last to help in the defense of the British Isles” (p. 251).

Now I’m glad I’m reading “Charlotte’s Web,” by E.B. White, c 1952. I have 30 pages to go, and I don’t want it to end. The book keeps my imagination alive.

Here’s what’s going on now: The Zuckerman and Arable families are at the county fair. They have entered Wilbur, their special pig, in the fair, and he is known pretty well in the area for his antics. When neighbors (and others from farther away) come to see Wilbur in his pen on the Zuckerman farm, they also see a spider web above him with a word woven into the web: “Radiance.” The spider who made the web is Charlotte. She’s a main character, too, as is the rat Templeton.

The animals all talk to one another. The first time this happens is when Wilbur wants to leave his pen and have fun, and the goose tells him “You don’t have to stay in that dirty-little dirty-little dirty-little yard” (p. 17 in the Scholastic Inc. paperback).

No one wants Wilbur to be sold, and I sense that Charlotte is the being who will continue to give him a good life. I will open the book again to read the last pages.