Green Tree

Book excerpt: The 1970s have long been a decade regarded with a wary eye by those who never experienced it and a weary eye by those have. The 1960s had come to a shaggy, uncertain end and the only sensible reaction was to find solace in what writer Tom Wolfe termed the Me Decade. Claymont, Delaware, was a typical town in the 1970s. The clothing styles, music, pursuit of recreation and day to day life were no different than what you might find in Haddonfield, New Jersey, Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, or Jacksonville, Florida, at least on the surface, but it was also distinctly Claymont as seen through the eyes of one of its more feckless, curious and mischievous junior citizens. Meet his family, Rodney Reeves, Freddie Lang and a host of others, including the inimitably unforgettable Boomer, and their wild and wooly adventures.