A naturally funny man, Jean Shepherd's conversation rambles as unpretentiously as his outfit. His dark glasses, Florida shirt and sneakers border on the eccentric. At the same time, he looks like a lineman for the Green Bay Packers and talks flat Midwestern like a Friday night bowler. Here's a man who has reached out and switched on light bulbs in the heads of a whole generation with hilarious explanations of American life. His stories echo hilariously sad and hopeless youthful dreams. There have been: In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash; A Fistful of Fig Newtons; Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters; The Star Crossed Romance of Josephine Cosnowski; The Ferrari in the Bedroom, and numerous other tales. "Childhood seems good in retrospect," he said, "because we are not yet aware of the basic truth: that we're all losers... and death is the final defeat." Shepherd appeared Sunday as headline speaker for the Conversations with Indiana Authors series co-sponsored by the Indianapolis Public Library and the Public Library Foundation. He spoke at the University Conference Center on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. Critics have described Shepherd as part George Ade, part Robert Benchley, part James Thurber and part Mark Twain. Shepherd described himself simply as a "refugee from Hammond, Indiana." "I'm often asked if I'm nostalgic about the old hometown," he laughs. "I can only say are the Jews nostalgic about the Warsaw Ghetto? Hammond's the worst town to be from in the whole United States - if not the world." Still, although anti-nostalgic, he talked fondly of "da Region" of northwestern Indiana, where he played blocking back for the state champion Hammond High School football team in the late 1940's. Shepherd won't tell his age or offer specific dates on anything. "That puts you in a time frame," He said, " and I don't like edges. I write about emotions that are as timeless as 1910 or 50 years in the future. I draw from youthful experiences in Indiana, but they are just to make a universal point recognizable to everyone. We all, to one extent or another, have shared these feelings no matter where we're from." Actually the stories of this Indiana University literary product are fables or parables that he said often go unrecognized by his readers. His popular film, A Christmas Story, based on his short story, Red Rider Nails the Cleveland Street Kid, was an anti-war story. It was about a kid's obsession with receiving a BB gun for Christmas, and how everyone cautioned that It was dangerous - "you'll shoot your eye out." "But, you see, that didn't make any difference to him. He was still obsessed. The point was to show obsession with war and danger. No matter how dangerous, we still are obsessed by its romance. "Of course, I could have said war is bad ... then, I could have said water is wet, too, you see." Shepherd didn't start out to be a writer. He was an actor and standup comedian. A magazine publisher caught his act and asked If the writer could put the material Into short story form. He did. It was published and he was launched on a writing career. ''You have to have a certain arrogance, or self esteem that makes you go out and do a thing Instead of sitting around thinking about it." "It starts at a young age. You remember back In high school? There were always the kids who stood around and watched, and there were always the kids who were out there doing. "Well, it stays that way. The kids who did then are the people who do now." And Shepherd has done almost everything. Comedian, Broadway actor, radio and television star, movie writer/producer, playwright, author, traveler. In a way, he is America, communicating who and what we are. As one critic described him, Shepherd is "the perpetual swish of the windshield wipers... The soundtrack of our lives."