Cabbages and Kings

Len spent his formative years playing on the streets of Baltimore. Those streets were seldom paved and they teemed with horses, carriages, and manure. Sanitation was poor and medicine crude by today's standards. Orphans abounded and there were no laws to protect the innocent. Life was rarely just or fair but to a child it was almost always fun. He watched the ships coming and going in the harbor; clipper ships, steam ships, later submarines and ocean-going liners. He saw Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and he survived the Spanish Influenza. He partied through the Roaring Twenties, lost all his money in the crash of '29 and eked out a living during the Depression. He saw his son off to war and scoffed along with the rest of the country at those early television shows. At his mother's urging he moved to Altoona, Pennsylvania where he bought a home, raised a family, and became a part of the life of that community. Railroads were at the peak of their prosperity when he began to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad and he was still there when the glory of the railroads began to wane. His story is one of an ordinary man witnessing extraordinary times as the world underwent the most dramatic social, political, and technological changes in history. This is his story. It is a tale of love and laughter.