The Payton family bore the brunt of their era's meaner twists: the Comstock Laws, the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and World War II. None of it kept the seventh of eight Payton kids from relishing his early years in Colorado's Grand Valley. Wayne made a specialty of surviving calamity and forged himself a Crockett caliber boyhood. His explorations broadened when wartime brought family solvency in the form of shipyard jobs at San Francisco Bay but scattered the Payton boys across battlefields from Africa to Asia.