Nostalgia is about a son, whose father is telling him about what happened when he was eighteen, when the “mule killers” made it to his father’s farm. The story takes place at two different times, the present where the father and the son are picking asparagus in the garden and in the past when the father was 18. The story most likely takes place in Tennessee, U.S.A., since the narrator's grandfather takes one of his “hands” to a hospital in Nashville. The town where they live is small; people easily bump into each other and there is one single drugstore where they can go and buy a soda.
As reader we don’t know at what time the story takes place, but based on the text you will find some things that indicate it. First of all the narrator’s grandfather is replacing the mules on his farm for two harvester trucks which suggests that it takes place in the 20s or 30s where the industrialization had its major breakthrough. The grandfather’s view of marriage also points out those decades; if his son was going to have a baby with a woman he would have to marry her. The part of the story where they are in the garden is 37 years later.
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