From the "Early Age of Nothing" in 1915 to his retirement in 1980, Charles McCannon chronicles the people and places in between: unforgettable schoolmates on Maple Avenue in rural Illinois, Mousie Carr, Kelly Bishop, Billy Moberly and Chink Longbreak; the war years in Iowa and Kansas at the Weather Bureau and Aeronautics Administration with George Stanton and the Russian immigrant Lunch; treating animals like Duchess, Mighty Manfred, Dum-Dum and Delilah...