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31I was born on future President Richard Nixon%u2019s 36th birthday %u2014 January 9, 1949 %u2014 but there is no indication that he took notice of my arrival. Back then, my hometown, Fowler, Indiana, was a peaceful, quiet community, filled with tree-lined streets, white houses, and about two-thousand people. It was, and still is, surrounded by some of the richest farmland in the nation. The Benton County seat, Fowler is located about 100 miles from Chicago and 100 miles from Indianapolis, a fact that gave the local 100 Mile House restaurant its name. Although it%u2019s now long gone, there used to be a magnificent, two-story, red arrow, illuminated with flashing lights, pointing to the ground in front of the restaurant, marking the 100-mile spot.When I was growing up there, Fowler was a self-sufficient community, with grocery stores, restaurants, a dime store, a hotel, a couple of automobile dealerships, and a movie theater. The theater has been restored, but the years have taken their toll on a lot of the town and many residents now commute 30 miles to Lafayette for employment. The number of people actually living there hasn%u2019t changed a great deal over the years, but there are fewer businesses.My dad, Gregory Ralph Bower, grew up as the youngest of fourteen children on the large and sprawling Prairie View Farm just a few miles east of Fowler. Everybody called him Greg, but he always signed his name, even on my school report cards, with an official looking Gregory R. Bower. He grew up in a large, modern, up-todate, turn-of-the-(19th)-century house that had its photo featured in a 1918 issue of The Country Gentleman magazine. The house boasted a gasoline-powered central-vacuum system, an Otis basement-to-at2John (before Lynn)