It was the best of times… “Leave the Kid Alone…” is a seriocomic memoir set in the free and easy safety of the 1950s. Stevie is seven years old. He lives with his parents and siblings above the family-owned saloon, restaurant, and country inn in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The family business is, and always has been, peddling liquor to people who would have been much better off without it. Stevie’s domain is populated with a never-ending parade of colorful characters, from Eugene, the king-sized, ever-wise, Seminole Indian bartender, to the combat veterans of WWI, WWII, and Korea laboring in the kitchen, to the free-spirited waitresses, to the Broadway celebrities carrying on nefarious affairs, to Stevie’s mob-connected godfather. Added to this mix is Stevie’s family; an overbearing older sister, blasé hard-drinking, hard-working parents, a grandmother he never knew existed, and a tyrannical great aunt. The tale unfolds over the course of a single year: Quaker school, toiling in the kitchen, summer at the Jersey Shore, the Shakespeare Festival in Canada, bussing tables on Thanksgiving, Christmas chaos, and his father’s intrusion into reenactment of George Washington crossing the Delaware. The memoir culminates with Stevie reflecting on the emotional challenges and pressures his clan faced daily while residing above this raucous establishment. “Child labor laws do not apply when it comes to a family run business.”