What an offbeat title, I thought.

Peter Smith’s reminiscences of his baby boomer Chicago childhood and later adventures in Viet-Nam and Minnesota live up to its portent. While his style is as smooth as silk, the vignettes explore the road bumps of everyday life, a “stream of episode” centering around family, church, school, friends, and the city.

The cavalcade, Smith explains in the preface, is “…not so big as to scare you to death or so brutal as to cripple you for life. Just that steady drip, drip, drip of small stuff that jars you on some level, then disappears to return years later like the people, events, and small stuff recorded here.”

The author grew up in a Catholic family with eight siblings, which is a story in itself. I cut my teeth and came-of-age in the same city at the same time. He captures the streets, the smells, and zeitgeist of those urban years.

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