Mug Sprong (1955-2011) Part 1

1955-1973 : Mug was born in the Indiana town of Austin, just a few miles north of Scottsburg. His mother, Reba, was a homemaker and a volunteer for a state agency that distributed shampoo to the children of depressed jazz musicians. His father, Pik, was a heckler's assistant who was receiving disability payments for a stress-related injury that occurred while he was applying for disability payments.
   At the age of 11, Mug was diagnosed with Quaker's Tantrum. A common ailment in southern Indiana, it was also known as Drooler's Regret. The primary symptoms, which were not considered life-threatening, included Brow Mites and Pubic Weevils. There were a number of opinions as to the most effective treatment for this condition, most of them based on family income. In Mug's case, his doctor recommended that he be withdrawn from school for the rest of the year and kept to a strict diet of canned foods that had been marked down for quick sale.
   One day, while recuperating at home, Mug was visited by a neighbor of the Sprongs, Dellard Kepple. Dellard was a retired educator who, for more than thirty years, had taught a class in Alcoholic Poetry to third-graders at the local elementary school. In an effort to help Mug continue his education during recovery, Dellard brought him the entire Encyclopedia of Modern Psychology. Dellard had only recently purchased the books at a yard sale, under the mistaken impression that they were catalogs of slightly unstable mail-order brides. Although it took more than three months, Mug read the complete encyclopedia. While some of the concepts in the books were too complicated for him, he came away convinced that his life's purpose involved the study of the human mind.