. . . outside of Philadelphia in a bowling alley. His friends kid that he comes from the gutter. He was orphaned and then adopted by a generous couple running a girls home for delinquent teens. At the age of three, his new parents, the generous couple, moved the family to Wisconsin. Sam was not an outstanding child, though he once saved a baby from a falling hammer by taking the blow himself. The scar still remains just below his hairline. Some say it looks like a diamond; others say it looks like a tear; Sam says: "at some point it turned, it bent, it hunched me at the shoulders, broke me at the belt".

He was lost for a week when he was nine. He was found in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Under the Big Top...asleep in a circus wagon...gifted a ukulele by a clown...