A memoir of Bill Mauldin's unorthodox boyhood. Very Eisner-esque illustrations throughout.

"It seems that once upon a time - in fact, many times upon many times - the father of the author of this chronicle got an idea. It was practically always the same idea: The time had come for a change, a new deal all round. Greener pastures, even if they happened to be the sandy wastes of the Arizona desert, with nothing but rattlesnakes, a tired old gold mine with almost no gold in it, and a family goat to break the monotony.

"Nothing quite like this volume of personal history has ever appeared over our imprint or anybody else's. It has a style all its own … but it isn't just the style. Nor is it altogether the fact that this account of a boyhood is more contemporary in time and fresher in setting and action than anything comparable. We have here, indeed, a notable piece of Americana, and no doubt generations yet unborn will read it to learn what it was like to be a boy in a family in New Mexico in the mid-twenties, a family which always managed to be broke."