This is a collection of tales about a boy and his sister and brothers growing up in four small towns between 1943 and 1961. The tales tell of a time In school when we didn't need to bring permission slips to the teacher to go places. We never had to have our Halloween candy X-rayed for pins and razor blades. My mother never had to make play dates for me to play with my friends. We didn't have to remain on our property or worry about talking to strangers or worry about whether my grades would get me into the right prep school so I could get into the right college. When we played, one team won and the other lost - not everyone got a prize for participating. We risked hanging by our toes or climbing over walls too high, and sometimes got hurt - but we then knew our limits. Our playground didn't have a rubberized surface, so we got skinned knees and elbows, and learned to cry only when we seriously wounded ourselves.

In a word, we had much more freedom than kids today. Freedom to try something and succeed and freedom to try something and fail. We got to learn from our successes and from our failures. We got to learn that our failures wouldn't scar us for life; well, wouldn't psychologically scar us for life. In my old age I still have a fair number of physical scars.