By the time I showed up in 1948 and before these pictures were taken, our family of six was firmly set up at 2311Third Street, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. A place where up to fourteen my summers were spent riding my bike all over town and hanging out at the municipal swimming pool. In the Fall, getting used to being back in school. During Winter, shoveling walks and throwing snowballs at every chance at anything and anybody. Then Spring fever, driving parents and teachers nuts getting ready for summer. When I turned fifteen, I got my first job, emptying the 55-gallon forest green garbage drums in the city parks for $1.25 an hour, and these summers came to an end and the seasons were different. The following year as soon as I turned sixteen, I got my driver's license, and the world changed.

                        At eighteen, I left home. The first picture represents this episode. It’s my student I D from Ohio State. I don’t remember when it was issued, all I can say is I didn’t have one as a freshman but had one by the time I was a senior. What I do recall was how I surprised most by graduating. During those four years, it seemed any male in good health was one of two places: in school or in the service. Some have said if it wasn’t for the draft, I wouldn’t have continued my education. I won’t argue the point; I liked the trades, but one couldn’t get a deferment. My first serious writing began with the draft board over a full-time student issue. Maintaining the deferment was an education in and of itself. As my education continued, the college bookstores taught me to always avoid situations that force one to buy high and sell low. One also had to master how to make sense of a few professors who were either way out in left or right field, plus the nonstop battle to keep the grade point average above sea level while enjoying a vigorous social life. There were classrooms, dorms, bars, and apartments, and a lesson to be learned in each of them. To me, college was an endurance test to see how well one could deal with all types of people under all types of situations, and the reason why employers prefer college grads.

                        The second picture, the chapter of leaving school and entering the real world. It's one thing to leave town but another to leave the country, this was taken in the Central Highlands. The war eventually caught up to me. It was a smorgasbord of carnage, hunger, poverty, and moral decay. I have pictures of people eating from garbage dumps, watched orphans beg in the streets, and young women turn into prostitutes to survive. It was the “We May Have to Destroy the Village in Order to Save It” episode of my own personal Twilight Zone. Followed by the experience of coming home. Vietnam is, not was, an experience I may mention in my writings, but I doubt I will ever write about it in depth.

                        The third picture brings us to the present. Here I’m looking back on all that has taken place and how to give it a voice. The return of good fortune in the wife I found and the children we have, how I’ve been as lucky as unlucky. I have conversations with the past all the time; they take place on a white screen and are spoken in ‘keyboard.’ They're influenced by the works of O. Henry and Rod Serling. O. Henry, who points out, "The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.” And Rod Serling, who takes this adventurer on...” A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination." The episode I'm on now...