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I was a college dropout, hitchhiking across the Midwest. That was part of the old, adventurous spirit.

It was the early 1970s and I was recently divorced. I had three kids and was totally broke. I managed to find work back east on the straw-hat circuit - summer stock - but couldn't afford hotels, so I lived out of the back of my truck, under a hard shell.

When I was 19 years old, I hitchhiked across the country to San Francisco.

I had been on the road for a long time and was not really getting anywhere. Bob Johnston, a friend of mine, had taken over Columbia in Nashville. He asked me if I wanted to come down. I did - thank God I did.

For years I drove cross-country, back and forth a dozen times, sometimes on book tour, sometimes just to get lost and found.

I haven't gone home with anybody who tried to pick me up in a long time.

I never knew when I was gong to leave. I might be walking over to a kid's house, then of all a sudden I would just stick out my thumb and hitchhike across three states.

I'd been in a vicious cycle and circle of people and couldn't see my way out. So I picked myself up one day about 15 years ago and moved where I didn't know anyone.

Once I took a bus from my home in Maryland to Philadelphia to live on the streets with some musicians for a few weeks, and then my parents sent me to boarding school at Andover to shape me up.