The Artist In The Kitchen's Son: A Real-Life Journey from Beekman, New York, in 1943 to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, in 1951 and Beyond

It all began in 1943--the war years. Air raid sirens howled warnings to pull the shades down in our house to prevent German pilots from seeing the lights and bombing us. Dad would come up from New York City on weekends, loaded with shopping bags filled with a week's worth of groceries.

The first eight years of my life were spent living on a gentleman's farm, walking over a mile to a one-room schoolhouse, and tagging behind my big sister, Alice. I was five years old then, and I remember it li...