The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked

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David Benjamin's eponymous character in The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked grew up in the era - between child labor and Little League - when parental disregard set kids free to devise and play their own games, make their own rules, argue their own disputed calls and roam free from dawn to darkness with absolutely no adult supervision. It was a time, between the end of World War II and the wholesale intrusion of parents into child's play, that Benjamin calls "free-lance childhood." It allowed a timid, bookish and intensely observant kid to explore the outdoors, range for miles on his bicycle, go fishing, go hunting, play baseball, football, soccer, go to the movies with a fellow rascal named Chucky Dutcher and get kicked out of high-school basketball games. This was an interval in American culture that has been overlooked by historians and sociologists alike. It comes to life in vivid and often hilarious microcosm, chronicled by a gifted and often lyrical writer.