It was an innocent time before wives, children, mortgages, and work responsibilities.

We were kids packed into a close-knit Philly neighborhood, playing every sport imaginable in the local schoolyard. We relished creating adventures together and pranking everyone - and each other - to amuse ourselves.

It was Olney in the 1970's.

Bike jumping, The Olney Times, Roller hockey, Fairhill Street, The G, Green's, Knockouts, Fastball, Fisher Park, Mike Overowens, Deeter, the Fern Rock Diner, Fly-Catching, The 'Butter Cake Incident', Beatnik Slop, The Tracks, Carl Salemlight, Tae, The Tunnels, Stevers, The Yard, Mike Underowens. We were endlessly up to something and everything.

And with a little help from his friends, Meak pulled off the greatest pranks in the history of Olney.

Join author Mike Carlin for this raucous tale of kid-ventures with his friends in Philadelphia, and the mischievous pranks pulled on venerable local newspaper, the Olney Times - and the bullshit stories that became the stuff of legend.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Meak, it's gonna be hard to explain. It's like, you had to be there. So you got your work cut out for you, trying to put it all into book form [laughing]."

- Jim "Kills" Kilgallen

"It had a small-town feel to it. We were in Olney, one small neighborhood in Philly, but we had the Olney Times, the Olney Eagles, and so much more - it was great."

- Joe Conklin

"That stuff with the Olney Times was just an extension of all of us constantly pranking each other. The UFO stuff was like the "Grand Prank."

- Mike "O" Owens

" I liked living on Lawrence Street. All the neighbors were nice, especially Peggy Kilgallen, Marge Kenny, and Dee Spagnoli."

- Marie Carlin

"All that stuff, the memories - I enjoyed doing it all. Meak, there's an old Chinese saying, "May we live in interesting times." And that was an interesting time in our lives. The '70s was quite a time."

- Carl "Carrel" Meistering

"Meak, If there was a person who was going to write this book, it was going to be you. You guys - between you, the Kells, your brothers, Carl - all of you guys were like heroes to us. It needed to be captured."

- Paul Owens