As a member of America's "Greatest Generation", Gene Lyng has lived his life across a span of time marked by rapid social and economic change and periods of high drama on the global stage. Born two years before the start of the Great Depression, he experienced a childhood of deprivation and struggle that instilled capacities for self-reliance, ingenuity, and optimism that shaped his character. This book chronicles the personal details of his passage through the seismic events of the twentieth century-the Great Depression, World War II, the urban/suburban expansion of the 1950s, the political and cultural upheaval of the 1960's, and the economic and technical transformation of everyday life during the last decades of the twentieth century. He describes the life-altering experiences of leaving the parochial world of his Oklahoma farm days to become a cosmopolitan world traveler while serving his country during WWII. This journey led him to the English beauty who became the love of his life for over fifty years and his enthusiastic partner-in-adventure as they raised a family and realized their life ambitions together.