Oh boy... this is SUCH a great book, it is SO amazing to read about what this man went through. And he can tell it all in such a funny way even when it's not supposed to be. To read about all the things that happened to Buster, you get the idea that if guardian angels do exist, there must've been about 100 of them assigned to his immediate family, among other catastrophic or near catastrophic events that fell upon them:

Two months before he was born, his mother was thrown out of a buggy when the horse got scared and took off, but when her husband caught up with her all she had to say was 'did you catch the horse?'

When Buster was 3, he got his index finger stuck in a clothes wringer and had to have it amputated at the joint. The next day he went out in the yard, saw a peach in the tree he wanted, threw a brick up at it, the brick hit him in the head, split his skull open and he needed 3 stitches.

Also as a child, a cyclone hit and he was sucked out of the window and rescued by a man who took him to the nearest cellar.

During one vaudeville show, his father miscalculated how high he was supposed to kick and he nailed Buster in the head and he was unconscious for 18 hours.

His little brother Jingles slept through a train crash that threw him out of his seat and onto the floor under another row of seats.

When his sister Louise was 13 months, she wandered out of a French window and was cut up from ear to ear, her tongue was about cut into 2 pieces and her jaws were out of their sockets. Her mother took her to the hospital and she came out of it without so much as a scar.

It's a wonder the whole family survived but it's especially amazing that Buster even lived to grow up considering all the stuff that happened to him. But what's funny is even for this being turn of the century, early 20th century when everybody's more lax about child abuse and more strict in disciplining kids, in New York the mayor was called out by the child cruelty prevention people because they wanted the act where Joe Keaton tossed Buster around and mopped the floor with him banned. The mayor had 6 year old Buster strip down and saw he didn't have a single bruise on him and let them go on with their business.

I'm only about a third of the way into the book so far but it is VERY good, and I like that Buster touches on something nobody ever talks about, that being his 7 month term stationed in France during World War I; though there are plenty of humorous moments to read about there as well.

It's very funny because people say the greatest comedians are those with the most tragic lives, and Buster had people thinking for decades that he had to be so miserable because he always had that look on his face, that





whatever you want to call it. But by his own admission, some of the best times he had in his life was when he caused people to say amongst themselves 'look at that poor dope, will ya?' And also by his own admission, despite the hard times and ups and downs he did have, they weren't a large part of his life, his recounting of them though they seem mashed together very well in the book come off as being very few and far between.

What some people know about Buster is that he only spent ONE day of his life in school. What most people probably DON'T know however is that he was 6 years old when he went, and he was sent home with a note telling his parents don't send this boy to our school again, because they couldn't handle him because he liked to retell the traveling show jokes when answering the teachers' questions.

He points out it was very lucky he loved performing because NOBODY ever questioned what if he wanted to do something else when he grew up? Though he himself commented he wanted to be a civil engineer, and to read about the devices that he made for some people, it's obvious this man was a real genius, we should all just be so thankful he didn't use it for evil, it seems there's no end to what he could think up and make happen.