Just a few months ago I celebrated my 75th birthday with a family reunion on the shores of Lake Chapala, Mexico's largest lake and the site of our winter home. We ranged in age from 13 months to 75 years. Somewhere along the way I had become the senior member of the family - the previous generation had become little more than memories, lost but for a few faded photographs. I wished I knew more about my parents, my grandparents or perhaps my great-grandparents who lived in a pre-industrial world before the advent of cars and airplanes, before telephones and electricity, even before photography had been perfected. I wished my morfar's morfar, Olaf Borgquist, had written about his life as a blacksmith in the early 19th century. I decided then and there to record the story of my life; to pass on to my grandchildren and great grandchildren what life was like for an average citizen of the USA during the 20th Century.