How to get to Muncie -- A place that's known -- Muncie rain -- The conductor -- Raking leaves -- Tecumseh among them -- Delivering the Muncie Star -- Swimming in the shallow end -- One reading the text : Dreaming of Columbus : a boyhood in the Bronx -- Homebound -- A season of brothers -- Homage to James Dean -- In Muncie -- Curves on the open road -- California dreaming -- In our stories : a history lesson -- A New York minute -- Somewhere in the Rhône-Alpes -- Sequoias at Insel Mainau -- Tsamikos for a tourist -- On getting an education -- The long-distance blues -- Home -- Invention -- Foundation building -- Toads breeding, thumb swelling -- The dream of luxury -- Neighborhood gossips -- Of time and geography in Muncie -- 5 A.M. -- Foreground to some background blues at the Boar's Head Inn -- The color of grass -- Inventory -- Elegy -- Gifts from Gamberaia -- And then a child died.