This is a story of growing up in a small town in Arkansas in the 1940's and '50's. Many of the incidents in the book are humorous, such as the Sunday night when my friends and I attended a revival meeting at the First Baptist Church and then went out to steal watermelons. Our town was sandwiched between an Army artillery range on one side and abandoned strip mines on the other. While swimming in a strip mine with my best friend, he drowned. At another strip mine several of us engaged in a somewhat comic but potentially deadly gun battle. As children during World War II we played with munitions collected from the artillery range, until two friends had limbs blown off while playing "soldier" with a live rifle grenade. Our town was surrounded by danger. Its people were uniformly poor. But, as a child, I was not frightened by the danger and I was oblivious to the poverty. I grew up in a family and community of flawed but caring people. I hope I have depicted them honestly.