James H. Quessenberry, Sr. was Jim's father and a farmer who worked the rich bottomland of the Arkansas Delta. He and Jim were partners in the family's cattle business — an operation that put Jim in the fields, on horseback, and in the rhythms of rural Arkansas life that shaped his worldview.
The connection to the land, to livestock, and to the slower pace of Delta farming runs through everything Jim later did — from the patience of all-night pit fires to the way he talked about food as something you earned rather than something you bought.
