The Good Life

Whether you experienced the era or just enjoy reading about it, you will take pleasure in the very sincere and unpretentious recollections of growing up when America was going through many changes.

Among the endearing childhood memories to be found in The Good Life, Shepherd recounts cutting through a fence with his friend “Too Tall”—risking the whip of a patrolling cowboy—to see the Clyde Miller Rodeo, as well as sporting a Mohawk for the summer and pretending to be Chief Blackhawk in nearby woods.

At age fourteen, Shepherd began working as a telegrapher for the Illinois Central Railroad, and on his seventeenth birthday, embarked on a much more complicated and dangerous life serving in the US Navy.

Included in the book are several near-death experiences. Events like making a crash landing when the Piper Cub’s engine stopped during an exercise with the Civil Air Patrol Cadets, or diving out of the way as molten metal was dropped while working in a foundry, make for exciting reading!

In retrospect, Shepherd seems to have had a hard life. But he doesn’t think so. The author looks back at his early years as the adventure of a lifetime!

A good life, indeed.