From Swamp Yankee to Desert Rat

The author manages to break all the ＂rules＂ of memoir writing in recounting in humorous fashion lessons learned from the small things in life: From selling fiddler crabs and quahogs as a youth in Wickford, RI., to ending up with an odd-shaped Christmas tree taken from the mountains outside Omak, Wash., to eluding rattlesnakes and bears as a (supposed) adult in Arizona. There is a clerk who won’t sell him three comic books for 30 cents because he doesn’t have a penny for the tax, a wonderful jar of peanut butter (with no peanut butter in it) for a Christmas present, a difficult Latin teacher at La Salle Academy, a true humorist publisher at the Omak Chronicle. Eventually he concludes that he spent four years earning a journalism degree to achieve the newspaper gold standard: writing at the sixth grade level. As a newsman of three decades, he discovers how orchardists magically produce three apple crops a year. And he is sent out to interview an actor he has never heard of -- Jeff Bridges. A fun read.