Before these pictures were taken, and by the time I showed up in 1948 our family of six was firmly set up at 2311Third Street, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. A residence that no longer exists. Where up to the age of 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 every chance I got at anything and anybody. Then Spring fever, driving parents and teachers nuts getting ready for summer, to complete the cycle. But when I turned fifteen, I got my first summer job, emptying the 55-gallon forest green garbage drums in the city parks for $1.25 an hour, and the rhythm of these seasons changed for good. The following year, as soon as I turned sixteen, I got my driver's license, and a new era began, and my universe expanded way beyond the city limits.

                        I left home at eighteen in 1966; the first picture represents this episode. It’s my student I D from Ohio State. I don’t remember when it was issued, I didn’t have one as a freshman but had one by the time I was a senior four years later. During that time what I do recall was how I surprised most by graduating, the smart money wasn’t on that happening.

                        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 Summit County Local Draft Board 115, East Mill Street, Akron, Ohio, concerning my ‘full-time student’ status. Maintaining the deferment while in school was an education in and of itself and where I first began to blend fact with fiction.

                        As my education continued, the college bookstores taught me to always look for alternative sources. Student to student direct sales or the bookstores not close but far from campus. To avoid the negative impact, as taught in Econ 101, of buying high and selling low. I also learned how to maneuver around those professors who were either way out in left or right field, to keep the grade point average above sea level while enjoying a vigorous social life. There were classrooms, libraries, and auditoriums, along with 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 most employers prefer college grads and pay them more.

                        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 moral decay. 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. I don’t believe I could find and write what hasn’t been said.

                        The third picture brings us to the present. I’ve been as lucky as unlucky. The return of good fortune in the wife I found and the children we have. Here I’m looking back on all that has taken place with plans to give some, not all of it, a voice. 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." This is the final phase, and the one I'm on now...