Book excerpt: Welcome to Chicago's Southside L. Curt Erler comes from a large, hardworking family and in his autobiography, Southside Kid; he pays homage to strong family values, a simpler time at the tail end of WWII. The author recalls his childhood growing up on Chicago's Southside. The family gathering around Mom's Philco radio listening to Glenn Miller and Frankie Laine. There's dancing and drag racing on the East Side. It's all here, baseball, movie matinees at the Avalon Theater, young love and Friday night dances with the St. Felicitas kids. Moving into the mid-50's you'll find yourself surrounded by Rock and Roll and the sounds of Chicago's jazz joints. Music always played a big part in "The Kid's" life, and he provides an unparalleled written soundtrack that is bound to provoke happy memories. Southside Kid's narrator is the only non-Catholic attending a Catholic school. Young Curt was fortunate and clever enough to make the best of this rather trying opportunity. He tells of his Yankee adventures in the South and a few altercations on Chicago's Southside streets. This book is a wonderful and wildly fun journey down a memory lane filled with laughter and high jinks that leaves its reader with a sense of longing. Everyone should have a childhood that is this much fun and a life that is this rich. In fact, for L. Curt Erler it isn't a life, it is a celebration and it is what makes this memoir alternately so touching and so hilarious.