About the Author

     If the author needed to present qualifications for writing The Ecstasy of Freedom or either one of the other three novels, it should be no problem. He has done almost everything and gone almost everywhere he has taken Jasper, Harry Watkins in Hair Affair and Nathan Williamson in Mysterious Emily and certainly Camping in Alaska, his own story. At some time in his life he has “been there and done that.”

     The author was born in the state of Mississippi more years ago than he would like to remember; not as the son of a large plantation owner or even a small one, but the son of a sharecropper who owed the property owner; landlord if you wish; half of his crop of cotton, corn and sorghum each year; and almost his soul. He helped his father and older two brothers in the fields from the age of six.

     His father was almost under bondage to the property owner as Jasper was in the books; The Ecstasy of Freedom books one, two and three. He was not allowed to do work for other people; only on his assigned poor land, but at every opportunity he sneaked and plowed from daylight until dark for other people, furnishing the team, feeding them and receiving fifty cents per day.

     The family moved to California during the great depression of the nineteen thirties where for years the family moved up and down the state living in tents and working to barely survive and everyone in the family harvested everything from apricots to peaches to grapes to cotton and many other crops, and yes, to prunes; so the author was literally a “California prune picker.”

     The author has at sometime in his career, if that it was, done almost everything that he has taught Jasper to do in the three books; The Ecstasy of Freedom books one, two and three; the main exceptions were not being an attorney and not being shanghaied.

     At the ripe old age of sixteen the author was foreman on a ranch that raised apricots, almonds, peaches, walnuts, hay and various row crops as well as hogs, chickens and horses and the author was raising hogs to sell. The rancher along with the author did their own blacksmith work. The rancher had a large freight wagon as well as a buggy and a spring wagon that he entered in fairs; along with “Babe and Beauty” that are featured in book one, and other huge Percheron horses and mares, some of which the author had a hand in training.

     At seventeen during world war two he worked as a welder in a shipyard and while he was not busy at his own profession he learned to use acetylene torches.

At eighteen the author, along with his grandfather had a small cattle and horse ranch; he broke a few horses for other people as well as for himself and shod his own horse. He also trapped for furs to sell; at the same time the author was driving a commercial truck hauling hay, fruit and vegestables and other products as well as cattle until the draft board interfered. “You’re in the army now,” they said.

     During service he was in the tank destroyers, then the field artillery where he served a chief of wire (telephone) and radio and was loaned to the engineers where he was in charge of rebuilding an old army camp in Korea for officers and their wives and then was in charge of rations for the whole battalion.

     After service he owned and operated a commercial truck and trailer, tried farming part time, worked in three sawmills in California and Oregon. He even tried panning and using a sluice box for gold, and tried prospecting for uranium, worked as a deputy constable, owned and operated a lapidary shop; making costume jewelry from semi-precious stones and was a builder for the past forty plus years; owning and operating a contracting business in California and later, a corporation, building in Alaska.

     The highlight of his life was when he was a minister and presbyter for a church, for the southern half of Alaska. He voluntarily took on the job of organizing and working on churches.

     When asked how many states he has been in he says fifty-one; the fifty first is the one in which he spends most of his time; “state of confusion.”

     He says that at eighty two, one foot may not be in the grave but both feet are slipping.