"My lifelong passion has been for great literature, great music, great art includingsculpture and architecture, and great philosophy.I had some talented English teachers in high school and at the junior college in St.Joseph, MO.; also at Kansas University in Lawrence, KS., with extra credits fromthe University of Missouri-Columbia and University of Missouri-Kansas City.This led to my embarking on a teaching vocation myself. I taught on several levelsand I should have been able to use the experience to my benefit. Instead I hada breakdown that took me a while to recover from. While I was floundering myway out of this dilemma, I was hired by the City of Kansas City, MO. for a clericalposition and was assigned to their Municipal Farm (a still flourishing prison farm)which eventually evolved into the Municipal Correctional Institution. I intended andexpected that this would be a temporary expedient for me. I ended up staying forthirty years, mostly as a records officer at the prison.I’ve never written about those years, but that may yet occur provided time allows.During those thirty years I was able to partake of the City’s rich cultural life and Iread, read, read and also continued to write all through that period.Here are some stories from an earlier period of my life before most of theselatter things happened. Eventually I broadened my horizon to include an interestin German literature and currently I’m working at developing and honing mytranslation skills, hoping to make a contribution to the literary challenge of beinga translator."