Asparagus In My Tuba: The Strains of an Absentee Gardener

Description: A sensitive but cranky kid is born to a religious mid-western family. Due to the location and time period (1950s), he is safe roaming about on his own at almost any age, and gravitates to activities like sports, chasing skirts, and even farm work. He excels in music, but doesn't really see much example for academic importance at the family dinner table, and falls behind. Still, at graduation time he chooses college. From there he ventures far afield, including into areas he is not prepared for, then devotes much of his later life to circling back-literally and figuratively-from halfway around the world. Through the years, he sings professionally, rises to a full collegiate professorship, cooks, writes, raises horses, rehabs houses, gardens, paints, and turns almost anything he can into a joke. Fittingly, even his bios and website galleries reflect the colorful contradictions he personifies, as he snickers alongside old friends, who note what a "good time God had making" him. This book spot-checks a life of pendulum swings, if not 360-degree ups and downs. Hinted at in the tongue-in-cheek Prologue, a string of written sketches eventually constitutes the full length work: a zany mixture of memoir and essay, fueled by more experiential elements than a boy would have dreamed possible in a single lifetime.