A Lifetime of Stories Told the Way They Were Meant to Be Remembered
From moments shared with family and friends to stories shaped by time and memory, this memoir brings together a lifetime of experiences meant to make you reflect, smile, and remember.
"If you can count your true friends, your true friends with one hand, you have lived a good life."
This is a novel of fiction. Some of the stories happened to me, around me or to friends or aquantances. Others are just made up as my mind traveled there, using people, places and events as I recalled them. I collected these stories and began writing them down in my late teens.
Over the years I often wondered how i would ever combine these into any sort of cohesive novel of fiction; I also had collected many, many family stories and oral histories that I know my children have heard many more times than they wanted to, but that's just a benefit of being an old man. And then how do I know that they actually got the stories into their memories? That's the cool feature of this book!
I can tell the stories as fiction to the reading public, but my family might read one and say "Hey! This is that story I was trying to think of about uncle Paul and flying that Lockheed Constelation from South America back to the USA that Grampa was always talking about!"
Anyway, if I can make you smile, laugh or even evoke a tear, then I will feel like I have given some entertainment to someone who may have needed it at that time.
Featured Books
Book Themes
Friendship and lifelong memories
Stories shaped by family and time
Lessons learned through experience
The humor and weight of growing older
Author Background
Remember that liquor ad about "The Most Interesting Man in the World". Well, that's not Pete. On the other hand, he would most likely be the most interesting person that any of us have in our personal circle of friends. At the age of eleven or twelve he played drums in a wedding band and earned enough to be able to pay for a brand-new car at sixteen. (A Rambler wagon to haul his drums, but that still counts as a new car, and somehow seemed to fit Pete. He put mags on it!)
In his twenties he invented, built and patented one of the world's first electronic drum machines. Manufacturing was done in his basement. He's licensed as a broadcast engineer, licensed as a "100 ton captain" (which means he can captain rich peoples' yachts), started and built a company that bought, sold and refurbished lasers, played in a blues band that had songs near the top of the charts in Europe, currently plays as a studio musician for many groups in the St. Louis area, repairs fifty and sixty year old radios and jukeboxes for a hobby and grows pumpkins in his backyard. Oh, and has written a book!
Pete and I have known each other over 65 years and have spent many an afternoon, often well into the evening (and sometimes into the wee hours of the morning) sitting at his breakfast room table, looking out over the Mississippi River, talking about absolutely nothing of any major consequence, and yet never running out of things to talk about. And sometimes there wasn't even alcohol involved.
So, as you read this book remember, it is the ramblings of a guy who has probably seen and done things that most people only wish we could do. Are all the stories 100% true? Well, it is Pete, and there just might be some embellishment here or there. Just a little! But then, does that really matter? - Jerry Ewing
Explore The Memoir
Everyone has a story… a memory… a moment that shaped who they are.