First There Was Music: Reflections on a Life, Revised Edition

This is the story of a Kansas farm boy, a third generation son of German immigrants, growing up in the fifties of Eisenhower, black and white TV, racial and sexual prejudice so ubiquitous, so much a matter of the woodwork, that most white citizens, especially men, were not even aware of it. A reality our character gradually understands as he matures through small town fisticuffs and clarinet lessons to come of age in 1960 as the first of his clan to enter college. He is dubbed the "teenage ...