"It were the eleventh year of my young life when I embarked on a journey, into the wilds of Tennessee and onto the cobbled streets of Baltimore, that changed my course in ways I could not comprehend back then. In telling the story I will endeavor to address you in my plain manner, as I never posessed the many flowers of learning cultivated by those born into better circumstances, and lay before you a narrative of the trying and adventurous and somewhat humorous situations I faced during that time, and the most colorful aquaintances that all together made me become sort of a little man by the time I turned twelve. I recount it all here in the hopes of giving you an honest chance to know the person living as myself as a young lad, at the time feeling I stood no chance at becoming great in any other way than by accident and maybe, if I done my job right, I will have provided you some entertainment along the way. It were long gone from now, yet when I turn my memory back on it, it seems as but the work of yesterday.