POINT CLEAR, Alabama—Growing up on a farm in South Georgia gave him a helpful perspective on his future career, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said during a hallway conversation Friday following a judicial conference of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Thomas recalled his friend Justice Antonin Scalia telling him that service on the nation’s highest court was hard work. Thomas said he answered, “It can’t be hard work in air conditioning.”