Book excerpt: Confessions Of a Crabgrass Cowboy is a tale about coming of age in a fresh and eccentric environment called suburbia. As a personal memoir, the book details the vicissitudes of replacing playground bullies with "Playboy Playmates," while simultaneously preparing daily for the Armageddon we were promised was right around the corner. Confessions Of a Crabgrass Cowboy also chronicles the cultural quirks of the era itself-Dick and Jane, CONELRAD, Charles Atlas, Tupperware(R), X-Ray spectacles, coon skin caps, and anatomically correct dolls are but a handful-that we now so closely and warmly associate with this distinctive period in American history. Were Dick and Jane the only children in American without a surname? Did Battle Creek, Michigan really exist? Were the prodigious privates of John Dillinger really placed briefly on display at the world-renowned Smithsonian Institute? Were the lyrics of the Kingsmen's 1963 one-hit-wonder "Louie Louie" as obscenity-laced as many believed? What hapless sitcom blew the lid off the unspoken toilet taboo by exposing millions of viewers to the interior of an American bathroom for the first time? So saddle up for a leisurely ride back in time and discover what all the fuss was really about.