Learn what it was like to be a boy in a family in New Mexico in the '20s, a family which always managed to be broke. Pop, whose 'projects,' as he liked to call them, included everything from tourist cabins and gold mines to the dynamiting of swamps, is the dominant character. Pop's two sons, Bill and Sid, and his uncomplaining wife make up the supporting cast. And support they do. Mauldin's first memory is (at the age of three) of being seated on the bank of a small Mexican river smoking a pack of pilfered cigarettes. With some connection made between nicotine and memory, the saga of an unorthodox childhood flows on--