Or read it for FREE online
here!
What
will you read about in the book? Here are just
56 things!
1. Read my vivid memory of the time I had
amnesia.
2. Read about how a captain-to-be was drummed
out of the Mexican army when he blew off his hand with
a giant firecracker.
3. Read as I savage Prentice Hall/Regents for
discontinuing my book.
4. Read and watch me lay waste to tall country
crooners and their ridiculous hats as well.
5. Read of smashed dreams and a sunken Swedish
freighter.
6. Read of how a devout Baptist was accidentally
sent to Catholic heaven for four hundred years!
7. Read how my parents followed a trail of blood
and found me at the end of it!
8. Read about how my dentist was afraid that he
and I would be shot down together over Taiwan.
9. Read how a cowboy bass player had classmates
who liked to hunt while he only wanted to write poems
about the animals.
10. Read about how the same bass player started
the Paul is Dead rumor in 1969.
11. Read how my third grade teacher destroyed a
classmate for outing me as an atheist.
12. Read and learn that a frog pond isn't really
a frog pond when it's a palm frond.
13. Read about the whale and the popsicle
sticks.
14. Read about the hallucinogenic properties of
heavily hopped India ale.
15. Read about the demise of the green sunfish
in Arizona.
16. Read of how a girl sold a song to Bing
Crosby when traveling in the family car.
17. Read of how my brother discovered the
legendary Samuel Eddy Crappie Hole.
18. Read how Sonny Bono and I both got fired
with the same telephone technique.
19. Read how I broke my carburetor cable while
flying a Cessna 150 over Texas.
20. Read how to have a Hemingway
conversation by using expressions like,
"You're a worthless rummy, aren't you?" "You're a
miserable rotter." Christ on a crutch, you
bastard! and "You say the most bloody awful
things!"
21. Read of the overwhelming fear publishers had
that allowed me to sell them my books in the 1990s.
22. Read about mysterious eels lying on the
sand.
23. Read about how the ukulele is the most
underrated instrument.
24. Read how I wrote down the introduction to
Hoagie Carmichael's Stardust in every key
at the same time.
25. Read a comparison and see examples of my
father s penmanship at age eleven and mine!
26. Read about fairy shrimp swimming in the
rain-filled hoof prints of steers.
27. Read about Gammarus desperatus a new
species of amphipod found in Roswell New Mexico.
28. Read about how Ranger Doug toured as a
singer for nine months after losing his voice to a
mysterious malady.
29. Read about how I twisted myself into a
pretzel in kindergarten.
30. Read the shocking tale of how I lost an
earthworm down a drain in kindergarten.
31. Read how I was to shoulder a tremendous
responsibility in kindergarten!
32. Read the perfectly logical reason why I sent
17 letters to fictional people with names like Colin
Haunchsquat and Rose Fish who lived on streets with
names like Brisketslapper Avenue, East Spaghetti,
Chillipunch Street, and Ferris Wheel Avenue.
33. Read about how I sang Prairie
Lullaby to Grammy winner Woody Paul because he
couldn't remember the words to his own song!
34. Read how I played my song
"Lorelei!" to John Denver's guitarist who liked
it so much that he invited me on stage to sing it with
him!
35. Read how I made Grammy award winner Joey
Miskulin puff up in joyful pride with a single
well-placed compliment.
36. Read about how an alien from outer space put
an end to bullfighting.
37. Read of the Yaqui church in the desert that
I found and found again forty years later burned to
the ground.
38. Read about a man who was always embarrassed
because his crazy parents named him Jesus!
39. Read about how I got in hot water by buying
a stuffed iguana in Mexico when I was twelve.
40. Read how a drawling drugstore cowboy fiddler
wrote "Inertial, Viscous, and Finite-Beta Effects in a
Resistive, Time Dependent Tokamak Discharge." to get
his Ph.D in plasma physics from M.I.T.
41. Read how God screws up big time and
says, No, no! It is I....I who should
apologize!
42. Read of how a mysterious cassette tape of
Herb Jeffries magically appeared in my guest bedroom
and transformed my life.
43. Read how I almost won a class prize but was
disqualified for playing with my milk carton.
44. Read about a student who thought that
somehow her teacher had married the entire parent
teacher association.
45. Read about the lyrics I made up in third
grade for a song in class that weren' t used and how I
was finally able to share them with a classmate 54
years later.
46. Read of how our business failed because we
couldn't get ant lions to mate.
47. Read of the remorse I felt after I had
stepped on and killed forty cockroaches on a Mexican
dock in 1963.
48. Read about a treasure hidden in the desert.
49. Read about an ancient 24-foot dug-out canoe
that fetched loose off some lonely beach in Baja and
drifted across the Sea of Cortez and onto the Mexican
beach in front of our house.
50. Read about my friend who disappeared one day
never to be seen again.
51. Read about my six-foot-six impostor from
Alberta, Canada.
52. Read of how snapping shrimp drove me out of
the water in Guaymas, Mexico in the 60s.
53. Read about the 90-year-old park ranger who
liked to sing and who had a treasured
friendship with my dad.
54. Read about how I told a dental surgeon that
he had bad Karma.
55. Read about the blue-eyed man who was too
black to be white and too white to be black and had to
darken his skin with makeup to be the lead singer of
the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
56. Read of how a schizophrenic French girl
wrote an absolutely perfect description of the very
same recurring dream that I have.
