CLICK ON ANY LABEL BELOW TO JUMP TO THAT TOPIC FROM HERE.
1. Scientific Theories and Laws
2. The First Decade (1936-1946)
4. The Second Decade (1946-1956)
6. The Third Decade (1956-1966)
8. The Fourth Decade (1966-1976)
10. The Fifth Decade (1976-1986)
12. The Sixth Decade (1986-1996)
14. The Seventh Decade (1996-2006)
15. The Theory of More than Everything
16. The Eighth Decade (2006-2016)
18. The Ninth Decade (2016-2026)
Appendix A Paintings
Appendix B Caps and Bunnies
Appendix C Musical Compositions
Appendix E A Googolplex Universe
Appendix F Acknowledgements
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A mysterious fire broke out in a pig house and killed all of our pigs. I was only four at the time, but I remember it well. Another time, some of our cows died of poisoning; however, my dad didn't suspect anything sinister. He had used lye to de-worm some pigs and forgot the bucket in the pasture. These kinds of odd things can happen anytime on a farm. For example, in one particular field, lightning hit a cow almost every other year. It wasn't the same cow every time, of course.
Between four and five, I heard the Earth was round. That was OK by me, but I had the picture all wrong. I thought we lived in a big round hole surrounded by the rest of the universe which was all dirt. At the horizon, the ground curved upwards, but you couldn't see the rising ground because it was so far away. A bright blue haze called "the sky" filled this huge, dirt cave. I also heard that Chinese lived on the opposite side of the world, so I tried looking up there to see them standing upside-down. But that blue stuff and those pesky clouds were in the way. It's just as well; the Chinese were too high up there anyway. I don't remember how the sun, moon, and stars worked inside the Earth cave.
We saw a lot of movies about World War II, and I remember wondering as I walked peacefully along a country road one bright and sunny day: How can such a brutal war go on, and Iowa doesn't seem to know about it?
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We felt only some small effects from the war: buying war bonds, having paper drives, and saving important metals. When the movie Bambi came out, we got to see it by giving a copper kettle for the war effort. We had a sticker on the car indicating how much gas we were allowed to buy, and my dad had to repair car tires forever. He used to shut off the car engine going down hills to save gas, sugar was expensive, and toy balloons did not exist. A farmer couldn't buy a new tractor but could buy tractor parts.
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