12.Practice.Tests.for.the.SAT_2015-2016_1128p

Section 21
Practice Test Eleven
937
Questions 14-24 are based on the following passage.
Jn this passage, the author describes a man's contemplation
of his childhood on a farm that his family has
recently sold.
Yesterday there was a forest of corn here.
Thomas remembered racing through it blindly, his
forearms raised to protect his face from the rough
leaves. Playing in the corn was one of his pas-
( 5) times, a pastime of any boy who lived on a farm
that planted it. He would run until he was out of
breath, gasping and disoriented by the spears of
green towering over his head. It's easy to become
lost in a corn field, to walk in endless circles. It's
(1 O) easier still, by picking a row of corn and following
it out, to leave. Leaving the corn was easy.
For eighty years the family had grown corn on
its hundred-acre plot. In his grandfather's day,
even in his father's, wheat and timothy were also
(15) sown to help feed cattle and pigs. While there
had been no animals on the land in Thomas's
time, Thomas's father spoke at length about those
days, when he himself had been a child. Back
then, Thomas's father had dedicated every one of
(20) his free hours to taking care of the farm: grinding
chop, cleaning up after the animals, mendi .
ng
fences, and performing innumerable other taXIng
chores. Later, it was just corn, sold to some big
company out East that his father said paid them
(25) a little less every year. It wasn't about the money
though; his father would have made do with just
enough to keep things going. His concern was
family and tradition, the agricultural way of life.
During harvest, Thomas would ride on the
(30) enormous thresher with his father. In the cabin,
above the green sea parting before them, he would
listen as his father explained the significance of a
life dedicated to agriculture. As Thomas nibbled
on a lunch packed by his mother, his father
(35) expounded upon his philosophy that a man must
not be separated from the land that provides for
him, that the land was sacrosanct. He would say,
time and again, "A man isn't a man without land
to call his own."
( 40) He was not an uneducated man, Thomas' s
father. He had completed high school and probably
could have gone to college if he wanted, but he
was a man of the earth, and his spirit was tied to
the soil. Agriculture was not his profession; it was
( 45) his passion, one that he tried to seed in the hearts
of his three boys. Thomas's two older brothers
had little time for farmwork, however. What
chores they were not forced to do went undone or
were done by Thomas; their energies were focused
(50) on cars, dating, and dance halls.
Even at a young age, Thomas was able to see in
his father's eyes the older man's secret despair. The
land that had been in his family for three generations
was not valued by the fourth. Not even little
(55) Tommy, who always rode in the cabin with him
and helped out as much as he was able, would
stay and tend the fields. The world had grown too
large, and there were too many distractions to lre
young men from their homes. Boys these days did
( 60) not realize they had a home until it was too late.
Sitting on the hood of his jeep, Thomas gazed out
over dozens of acres of orange survey stakes that
covered what was once his family's farm. The house,
barn, and silos were all gone, replaced by construe-
( 65) tion trailers and heavy equipment. The town that
lay just five miles up the road had grown into a
city, consuming land like a hungry beast. Thomas's
father had been the last farmer left in the county,
holding out long after the farm became unprofit-
(70) able. He farmed after his sons left and his wife died;
he farmed until his last breath, on principle.
Now a highway and several shopping malls
were going to take his place, Thomas thought. His
brothers both said it was inevitable, that progress
(75) cannot be halted. They argued that if the family
did not sell the land, the city would claim eminent
domain and take it from them for a fraction of
what they could get by selling it. Thomas did not
feel he had any right to disagree. After all, he had
(BO) chosen to leave the farm as well, to pursue his
education. Though he didn't stand in their way,
and though his profit from the lucrative sale was
equal to his brothers', Thomas was sure he felt
something that they could not. The money didn't
(85) matter much to him; he had enough to get by. It
was something about the land. Now that he had
finally found his way back to it, he was losing it.
He was losing his home.
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