Book excerpt: Growing up is bewildering and exciting to every child. This was particularly true for a child born during the Great Depression (1930's) and who also experienced the "Home Front" efforts of World War II. Coupled with these great national events was the fact that this child lived in a multi-ethnic "melting pot" city of Passaic, New Jersey. The true growing up adventures are told in a series of stories, some with side-splitting humor, others highly poignant. For example: How learning the "facts of life" from the older guys on the street corner caused a major lifetime disaster; how, with his best friend, he personally helped defeat Japan and Germany in WWII; how he witnessed the three greatest aeronautical events of the 20th century; how the handwriting rules in the Passaic schools caused a blunder in front of President John F. Kennedy which helped Kennedy to decide to send a man to the moon; how the structural design of the giant Saturn rocket booster was actually invented in a Passaic toilet bowl. But more important, the stories provide the secret of how the immigrant-dominated Passaic uniquely prepared its children to succeed in America, and how it still doing it today.