Waving at Strangers collects 75 of David Allen's best columns from the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Within these pages, he eats his way through a restaurant's 144-item menu, joins ghost hunters at the Fox Theater and laments the loss of his childhood phone number.

He bears witness as a charming bridge on Route 66 in Rancho Cucamonga is demolished and listens as an Ontario cemetery manager muses about the stories untold on the gravestones. And as grand marshal of the Pomona Christmas Parade, he waves at strangers (and signs one autograph) from the back of a convertible.

Spanning the five years from 2006 to 2010, these columns by the Inland Empire's best-known chronicler will make you laugh and make you think. If you've read them before, you can greet them as old friends. If they're new to you, hello. Don't be a stranger.