Imagine a wheelbarrow full of marbles and spilling all of them in your backyard, and then you have to sort them all by color using only a soup spoon. This is how I felt when I started this book, substituting my stories for the marbles and my memories for the soup spoon. Right now I am ninety years old. I do not intend to bore you with an autobiography. It is true, however, that in many of the stories I am the main character. It is also true that many of the stories were told to me by relatives and close friends, but in either case the stories are shaped more by the circumstances. Because of...

Imagine a wheelbarrow full of marbles and spilling all of them in your backyard, and then you have to sort them all by color using only a soup spoon. This is how I felt when I started this book, substituting my stories for the marbles and my memories for the soup spoon. Right now I am ninety years old. I do not intend to bore you with an autobiography. It is true, however, that in many of the stories I am the main character. It is also true that many of the stories were told to me by relatives and close friends, but in either case the stories are shaped more by the circumstances. Because of...