The Shasta Serenade

Barry was a foundling in an old adobe in Southern California, adopted by nomadic Polish Gypsies, and lived with them until the age of 50. He has had no formal schooling, but learned to play the fiddle by the age of five. Throughout his early years, one could find him fiddling away in the foothills of Northern California tending his Lithuanian goats, making cheese and goat meat Kielbasa. He was renowned for his sheepherder’s bread making. He accidentally baked a rock into a particularly delicious loaf of bread, on which the chief of the gypsy clan broke a bicuspid. The clan seized his shepherd's cane and the Chief broke it in half tossing the parts to the ground. Barry was thus humiliated, and banished for life from the only family he had ever known. (Later, Barry sold the recipe for the Kielbasa to the NHL for a small fortune – they use it in the manufacturing of hockey pucks).