Grinnin' Like a Jackass Eatin' Saw Br'ars

The author shares a record of his life's footprints with future generations of his family who can never know him or witness historical events and paradigm shifts as he has over the past eight decades. He describes the hardships of growing up on a working farm in rural Alabama in the mid-twentieth century and later his educational and professional accomplishments after overcoming the disadvantages of poverty and other adversity. He honors his colonial ancestors and their descendants, including Revolutionary War soldiers, by remembering and writing about them and includes extensive family trees for his Walkers,Whites, Smithsons, Slatons, and Paynes. His military exploits are more properly described as escapades. He talks about his brushes with the technological and scientific innovations and reaction to major social and cultural shifts as one who understands the historical import of this most unusual age in our country's evolution.