In my book, "A Salesman", I didn't know many songs and much of what I learned came from my family. Well, my father drank a lot, bootlegged in the woods. My mother on the other hand wanted me to join the local church and sing in the choir. My audition came up and I only knew one song - my Dads drinking song, "The Beer Barrel Polka." On stage in I began to sing: Roll out the barrel! We'll have a barrel of fun. Roll out the barrel! We've got blues on the run. Zing, boom, ta

My story began in 1934, when I was born to a German father and French-Canadian mother on a small farm out of Hammond, Minnesota. The Great Depression began in 1929. I was born in 1934, and between this time and around 1940, the depression left thirteen to  fifteen million people in America out of work. Responding to that crisis, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created government funded, minimum-wage work organizations like the WPA or the CCCs.  WPA would build and repair