Randall Stevens, at 20 years old in 1966, was a wide-eyed, naive boy still a year away from being able to claim adulthood at that magic age of 21. Having come up with the idea to join one of the best state police organizations in the nation, he began the journey to become a Massachusetts State Police Trooper.

If anyone assumes this memoir begins with the telling of a strict, tedious, dull, or uninteresting police memoir, they would be very wrong. The determination, ingenuity, and near lunacy mixed with glimpses of courage and boldness, not expected from a boy so young, lends itself to a show all its own.

These narratives will strike all of your emotions. You’ll laugh, feel good, be sad, and maybe cry. There’s vindication, fear, and trepidation. You’ll peer into an officer's marriage and personal life. Most importantly, you’ll see a different side of police not often revealed and meet different characters, good and bad, who all played a part in molding the boy into a man.

These are simply the anecdotes most memorable to me. So, remaining as true to the facts as my senior memory allows, I offer this memoir as creative nonfiction, or true stories well told, recalling events as meaningful today as they were some 30 to 50 years ago. Many tales are zany, humorous, and feel-good, some are heartbreakingly sad, or a mixture of both as life so often is, but they’re real stories of people and life. And, they’re worth the telling.