The author wrote this book as a personal and family history for his children and grandchildren. It is a growing-up memoir offering glimpses of the Great Depression, the World War II home front, the postwar period, and a mid-century lifestyle that has long since vanished. The book also relates how, by age 9, the author had identified journalism as his future — and how it literally took a village (the 150 or so residents of the farming community of Wabash, Phillips County, Arkansas) to help him launch his career in newspapers.