"I am tall, and awkward, and [a] stubborn Vermonter who wears mule-ear boots, a ten-gallon hat and what I like to think of as a country-boy grin.

"My favorite sport is curling; I play piano honky-tonk style; I'm a rotten dancer and I'm allergic to English walnuts. My speaking voice is about as melodic as a train wreck, but I do sing in a barbershop quartet."¹

"Not surprising, as so many of my books feature a simple song or two which I've composed. I play self-taught ragtime piano, by ear, sometimes by fingers. To get raised as an uproader country boy means you've been treated to a spate of toe-tapping tunes.

"Music enters a child's soul, ¬ his mind. It enters through an ear, ¬ an eye. Even today, a sheet of music looks to me about as easy to savvy as a page in the Tokyo phonebook...