This is the story of a Kansas farm boy, a third-generation son of German immigrants, growing up in the fifties of Eisenhower, black and white TV, racial and sexual prejudice so ubiquitous, so much a matter of the woodwork, that most white citizens, especially men, were not even aware of it. A reality our character gradually understands as he matures through small-town fisticuffs and clarinet lessons to come of age in 1960 as the first of his clan to enter college.