Much love, warmth, and humor spill from the pages of this memoir of a mid-twentieth-century American childhood by David Contosta and Philip Hazelton. Making appearances are colorful eccentrics, bonfires and marching bands, hikes through woods ablaze with autumn foliage, downtown streets and country roads, an amusement park by the lake, four generations of neighbors and family members, famous residents from the past, and rites of passage from childhood to the mysteries of adult life. But with it all are racism, sexism, homophobia, class discrimination, religious prejudice, conspiracy theories, and tribalism. The authors do a personal excavation of an America that existed between the end of World War II and the onset of the counterculture. As such, there is much in the memoir that sheds light on the divisions that continue to afflict this nation at present. However, the authors refrain from calling out the location of their childhood, in an effort to represent the experiences of an "every town" during a revealing slice of American history.Making the book sparkle are several dozen illustrations by Julia Olszewski, an extraordinarily talented young artist.