After my Fall from the Tree House:

When I was not quite three, I fell out of the family tree house and landed on my head. Since then friends and family have wondered about my brain. This memoir of several dozen vignettes explores my “fallen” condition while growing up in Alabama, while serving as a medic with the Navy and Marine Corps, and while pursuing my teaching career. As a five-year-old I hated suspenders, so when I got my first belt I stood next to the highway in front of our house with my stomach stuck out so people in cars passing by could see my belt While serving in the Navy, I once tried to impress a barmaid in Tijuana with my knowledge of high school Spanish by reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish. Other vignettes celebrate normal times, as when I provided nursing care for a slowly dying, 84-year-old veteran of the Spanish American War. Another is when I attended the graduation of a former student of mine, a 50-year-old black woman who graduated summa cum laude from Mercer University. At eighteen she was denied admission to Mercer because of her race. Of course the best times have been with my beloved Danish wife of fifty-one years, our son and his family, and my parents, brothers and sisters. I hope the reader finds all of the vignettes either amusing or engaging.