Born in Hermiston, Oregon in 1943, Joe A. Moreland spent most of his childhood years living in and around the Coast Range of Western Oregon. He attended Oregon State University and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics in 1965. After graduating, he was employed as a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He conducted groundwater investigations in California and Idaho and served as a supervisory hydrologist in Idaho and Montana. In 1995, he was selected to serve as the Chief of the Ground Water Research Project in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates--a cooperative program between the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Drilling Company of Abu Dhabi. He retired in 1999 and moved to Orange, California with his wife Kay.

For the last 12 years, Joe has devoted his free time to civic enterprises including serving as an enumerator for the Census Bureau for the 2000 and 2010 censuses, volunteering as a poll worker in 17 local, state, and federal elections, serving on the 2003-2004 Orange County Grand Jury, and serving as the President of the Grand Jurors Association of Orange County in 2010-2011.

Although the author published more than 35 scientific and technical reports during his career, this book is his first serious attempt at Creative Nonfiction writing. He has 4 children, 2 step-children, and 10 grandchildren who he hopes will enjoy the tales he tells of his brothers and him living on the rough fringes of society where electricity and running water were conveniences not available to those who lived at the end of the road in the late 1940s and 1950s.