This novella, Apple in the Grass, and collection of twelve short stories provide a variety of philosophical, amusing and serious tales in which path-finding people at various stages of life venture beyond their familiar spheres and pursue new adventures, ambitions and lifestyles. Their experiences are often thought-evoking and range from laughable to disastrous. The stories take place during a time period beginning early in the Vietnam War era and extending through the early twenty-first century. While exercising personal freedom, and living with the eternal problem of balancing freedom with risks and order, our people meet and interact with people from other spheres of life, often people with controversial views, and stumble into places where they encounter the dark sides of industrialism, unregulated capitalism, military power, human adaptation, lifestyle destruction, and the unsustainable nature of most modern grades of civilization. Several of the stories drill into sophisticated problems with humorous dialog. Excerpts from several of the stories provide a sample of the flavor of this book:

..."How did you learn about the boat?" "An Okinawan that works at the fish market where I shop told me about it." "Sounds like a good source to me. A man that knows a lot about fish must know a lot about boats." Boat from Naha

....Deep in their hearts, most of the regulars believed that civilization could be blamed on women...Left on their own, men would naturally choose to be nomads, hunt and eat what they kill, cook over campfires, sleep in makeshift dens in the woods, bathe when they accidentally fall into water, and in the end they would starve to death in squalor if not clubbed to death sooner. That is the way it would be if not for women. Turkey Shoot

...Young people are especially vulnerable to popular ambitions in their society. That's because ideas are contagious and infectious like a virus, and the younger a person, the weaker is the immune system for rejecting ideas and the more prone is the person to infection. It probably has to do with limited exposure to bad ideas and the young person hasn't developed a mature immune system that's resistant to all new ideas. Apple in the Grass

...Leon said..."We shouldn't oversimplify and think in terms of civilized or not civilized. There are grades of civilization. I would define a high grade civilization as a sustainable one where man is not the greatest source of danger to man. In my opinion, man has never achieved a high grade civilization"...Apple in the Grass

"I think perhaps there is a strong centripetal force that's behind the concentration and accumulation of so much wealth and so many people in this city," Trip said, "and that force comes from a vortex created by unregulated capitalism." Apple in the Grass

..."I hope the city buys that Johnson farm," Frank said. "Yeah, me too," Bob said. "That's good ground out there. Deep sand and level. It'll make a good cemetery." "Lot's of new space to dig in. I heard it's over a thousand acres"..."It'll fill up in no time the way things are going." Long Days

Iron Oak was a small Texas town northeast of Austin. Fifty miles from the outward creeping edge of the growing metropolitan area, it was not in danger of being swallowed anytime soon...Tom and Eva moved to Iron Oak from the west side of Houston where they had lived in a very large house. They moved soon after they gave away five hundred million dollars...Life in Iron Oak