فصل 4-بخش دوم

I didn’t mishandle my newfound fame as much as I just didn’t really have a handle on it. I was numb, occasionally dumb, and picked a few battles that did not need picking. If I was thrown off balance for a bit, it was mainly because I gave a damn, and it mattered to me what it all meant, and didn’t. Mostly I danced lightly between the raindrops. I enjoyed being able to finally put super unleaded gasoline in my truck, picking up the tab when I went out with my friends, getting the backstage passes, and working with so many talented people. I tried to remain a gentleman and accept the caviar, fine wines, and “I love you”s with grace, but a lot of it felt like the maid was still pressing my jeans after I asked her not to. I made sure to call my mom every Sunday.

Only it wasn’t my mom I was calling anymore.

It wasn’t my mom who was listening to me.

It wasn’t my mom who was talking to her son.

It was a woman who was more enamored with my fame than I was.

This was never more evident than when I got a call at home from a friend one night.

“Dude, are you watchin this?”

“Watchin what?”

“Put it on Channel 7, Hard Copy!” my friend says.

I turn on the tube. Put it on Channel 7 and…

There’s my mother, talking to the camera that is following her through our house on a guided tour.

“And this is the bed where he lost his virginity to Melissa, I think her name was, anyway, doesn’t matter, she didn’t last…And this is his bathroom, just a shower, no bathtub, and you know what I caught him doing in there! Ha-ha, but trust me, it’s no big deal, I’ve seen it plenty of times.” Oh. Shit.

I call Mom.

“Mom, what did you do?”

“What?”

“Hard Copy.”

“What Hard Copy?”

“Mom, I’m watchin it right now; you are, too, I can hear it in the background!”

“Oh, that…”

“Yeah, that!”

“I didn’t think you’d find out.”

“Mom. It’s on national television. How would I not find out!”

Sadly, my relationship with my mom was strenuous for the next eight years.

“Loose lips sink ships,” I kept telling her. She tried. It didn’t matter, she couldn’t help herself. She wanted a piece of my fame, and while I was still finding my balance with it, I wasn’t self-assured enough to share it with anyone else, especially my own mother. The more she wanted a piece of my place, the more I locked her out. If Dad were alive he would have loved my success, but unlike Mom, he would have been in the front row, not trying to steal my show.

With Mom, as soon as I’d show up she was saying come back soon, so I started leaving early. I’d give her an inch and she’d take a mile, so when she didn’t meet me halfway, I started walking twice as slow to make her wait twice as long. I quit sharing any of my life or experiences with her; I couldn’t trust her. I didn’t need another friend on my bandwagon, I needed my mom, and unfortunately she was on another type of extended vacation.

Years later, with my feet more firmly on the ground and my career established, I finally said fuck it, and loosened the reins on her. She was in her seventies and I figured I might as well let her have all the fun she wants to, and to this day she does. She loves the red carpet, doing interviews, and telling the world she “knows where I got it from.” Her.

She’s got a point.

the art of running downhill

Don’t trip yourself while running downhill.

That mountain you wanna climb?

It’s just around the corner.

Don’t invent drama.

It will come on its own.

It’d been four months since A Time to Kill had been released and I was in high demand. Warner Bros., who I had signed a three-picture deal with prior to doing A Time to Kill, was anxiously anticipating my next role. Dozens of offers came my way, I even started a production company to create material of my own. I was hungry to go to work, I just didn’t know what I wanted to do. One of my strengths has always been that I can find an angle on anything, but now, with the ability to do almost anything, that strength was a weakness. Every project looked possible to me.

A man addicted to ideas need be intervened with starvation. A man addicted to truths need to be fed.

Feeling pressure to make a decision on my next movie, smothered by the blind affections of my recent fame, and having a new wildcard for a mom, I wanted to go somewhere where nobody knew my name. I needed to reaffirm that I, Matthew, not my fame, was justification for any adulation I received. I needed to go someplace where any affections I collected would be solely based on the man those strangers met and got to know after I arrived, not before. I needed to hear myself think—to check out to check in—so I could settle in to my new position of leverage and measure it, get less impressed with it, find some discernment, and figure out what kind of role, in what type of film, I wanted to do next. I needed some starvation. Then… I had a wet dream.

Yes, the involuntary intercourse-, hands-, and fellatio-free nocturnal emission of semen one has while sleeping. Rare but welcomed, these lucid dreams most commonly involve a theme of sexual activity. This wet dream was not common.

I was seeing myself floating downstream on my back in the Amazon River, wrapped up by anacondas and pythons, surrounded by crocodiles, piranhas, and freshwater sharks. There were African tribesmen lined up shoulder to shoulder on the ridge to the left of me as far as my eyes could see.

I was at peace.

Eleven frames.

Eleven seconds.

Then I came.

I woke up.

Whoa.

All the elements of a nightmare but it was a wet dream.

Greenlight.

What does it mean? I wondered.

There were two things I was sure about in the dream. One, I was on the Amazon River and two, those were African tribesmen on the ridge. I got out of bed and grabbed my World Atlas, then turned to the continent of Africa.

And started looking for the Amazon.

Well, as you probably know, you can look a mighty long time for the Amazon River in the continent of Africa because you’re not going to find it. I looked for that river for two hours until I realized… Wrong continent. The Amazon’s in South America.

Damn, dreams can be tricky. Nevertheless, it was a sign, and just what I was looking for.

It was time to chase down my wet dream.

Just because the seats are empty doesn’t mean they’re not taken. Sometimes the guest list needs to be for one. You.

I crammed my backpack with minimal clothing, my journal, camera, medical kit, a hit of Ecstasy, and my favorite headband, then embarked on a twenty-two-day solo trip to Peru to find, and float, the Amazon River. Yes, the one in South America.

I flew to Lima, then on to Cuzco, where I met a guide and we mapped out my three-week journey to the Amazon River over anticuchos2 and pisco. I hiked the Andes and along the Urubamba River into the lost city of Machu Picchu listening to John Mellencamp’s Uh-Huh3 album on my Walkman as I climbed. Then, I took a bus, boat, and plane ride to get to the largest city in the world you can’t get to by car, Iquitos, the “Peruvian capital of the Amazon.” It was the twelfth night of my twenty-two-day adventure and I was settling into camp. I’d already hiked over eighty miles to this point and tomorrow I’d finally be in the waters of my wet dream, the Amazon River. Up to this point in the trip I’d had a hard time being present, so excited in anticipation of what the Amazon would mean to me, I had missed most of the beauties getting there. Still wrestling with my identity, I was guilt-ridden over sins of my past, lonely, and disgusted with the company I was keeping, my own.

In my tent, grappling with my demons, I couldn’t sleep, so I quit trying to. Instead, I stripped off my clothes, along with every badge, banner, expectation, and affiliation I had on me. I discarded my American baseball cap that was my totem to patriotism, the Celtic knot pendant that symbolized my Irish heritage, the Lone Star flag amulet that stood for my Texas pride, and every other mascot of inspiration from adventures past. I even discarded the gold ring my father had given me that was made from a meltdown of his and my mom’s class rings and gold from one of her teeth. I removed every idol that ever gave me comfort and security, pride, or confidence. All the window dressings and representations, the packaging around my product, was gone. I even punched myself in the face a couple of times for good measure. Who was I? Not only on this trip but in this life. Now naked and stripped down to nothing, I was only a child of God, and nothing more. Soaked in a cold sweat, I vomited until there was no bile left in my belly, then passed out from exhaustion.

Sometimes we have to leave what we know, to find out what we know

A few hours later, I awoke on the thirteenth morning to a rising sun. Surprisingly fresh and energized, I dressed, made some tea, and went for a morning walk. Not toward my destination or any expectation, but rather to nowhere in particular. I felt great—alive, clean, free, bright.

Walking along a muddy path, I turned a corner and there in the middle of the trail was a mirage of the most magnificent pinks and blues and red colors I had ever seen. It was electric, glowing, and vibrant, hovering just above the jungle floor, pulsing as if it was plugged in to some neon-charged power plant.

I stopped. I stared. I backed up a pace. There was no way around it and it was no mirage at all. The jungle floor in front of me was actually a kaleidoscope of thousands of butterflies. It was spectacular.

I stayed awhile gaping in wonder. Captivated, I heard this little voice inside my head say these words,

All I want is what I can see,

all I can see is in front of me.

No longer in a rush to get anywhere, or anticipating what was around the corner, coming up next, or up ahead, time slowed down. I raised my chin to the sky and said a quiet thank you, then glanced down the path just past the massive menagerie of levitating butterflies, and there, for the first time, I saw the Amazon River.

The tower of all my anxieties now lying down laterally in front of me just like that slow-moving river, for the first time in months I was at ease.

A few hours later I returned to camp to pack for my continued journey. On arrival my guide called out to me in Spanish, “Sois luz, Mateo, sois luz!” Meaning, “You are light, Matthew, you are light!” Now forgiven, I’d let go of the guilt, my confusion was gone, my penance felt paid. Back in good graces I shook hands with myself. From that morning on, I was present, embracing only what I could see in front of me, and giving it the justice it deserved. For the next two weeks I hiked, canoed, and even macheted my way through the Amazon rain forest on my one hit of Ecstasy.

And, yes, I floated naked on my back down the Amazon River, but no snakes, crocodiles, sharks, or piranhas enveloped me as they had in my dream. I guess they didn’t have to anymore. On the final day, while bathing in the river, I did see what looked to be the final wave of a mermaid’s tail as it slid beneath the water’s surface heading downriver. I waved back.

I had crossed a truth. Did I find it? I don’t know, I think it found me. Why? Because I put myself in a place to be found. I put myself in a place to receive it.

How do we know when we cross a truth or a truth crosses us?

I believe the truth is all around us all the time. The anonymous angels, the butterflies, the answers, are always right there, but we don’t always identify, grasp, hear, see, or access them — because we’re not in the right place to.

We have to make a plan.

Greenlight.

God, when I cross the truth, give me

the awareness to receive it

the consciousness to recognize it

the presence to personalize it

the patience to preserve it

and the courage to live it

First, we have to put ourselves in the place to receive the truth. This noisy world we live in, with its commitments, deadlines, fix thises, do thats, and expectations make it hard to get clarity and peace of mind, famous or not. So we have to consciously put ourselves in a place to receive that clarity. Whether that’s prayer, meditation, a walkabout, being in the right company, a road trip, whatever it is for each of us.

Then, after we’ve put ourselves in this place to listen to the gospel and hear their music, we then have to be aware enough to receive it, and conscious enough to recognize it. It will arrive nameless because it is clear, omnipresent, unanimous, and infinite. It usually lands like a butterfly, quick and quiet. When we let it in, it needs no introduction.

Then the relationship can begin, and we need the presence to personalize it. This is where the anonymous truth gets intimate, and becomes autonomous. We ask our self what it means, how it’s unique to us, and why it’s here now.

Then comes a harder part, having the patience to preserve it— getting it from our intellect, into our bones, soul, and instinct. We must pay attention to it, concentrate on it, keep it lit, and not let it flutter away. This takes commitment, time, and ‘tendance.

If we make it this far, after we’ve put ourselves in the right place to receive the truth, recognized it as such, made it our own, and preserved it, then comes the coup de grâce… Having the courage to live it. To actually walk away from that place where it found us, take that truth with us into the screaming arena of our daily lives, practice it, and make it an active part of who we are.

If we can do that, then we are on our way to Heaven on Earth.

Where what we want is what we need.

Where what we need is what we want.

I returned to Hollywood and soon made the decision to play the role of Palmer Joss opposite Jodie Foster in Robert Zemeckis’s Contact. After my spiritual journey on the Amazon, my choice to inhabit a man who believed in God in a world of science was very close to the truth of where I was in my own life and where I wanted to spend my time in front of the camera. Jodie Foster was the clear lead and people questioned why I took “the girl’s role,” as they called it at the time, instead of taking other leading roles I was being offered. But I was more than satisfied with my choice, as I was interested in what I termed “philanthropic roles and stories of self-discovery,” as well as working with great directors.

After we wrapped filming, I continued canoeing rivers, only now I was ready to row the highways of the United States, so I bought a 1996 GMC Savana van and tricked it out to suit my fancies. I gutted the interior except for the two front captain chairs, and installed a custom-made console with a hideaway cooler and drain, a PA system like I had in my high school truck, and a Rode NT1-A shock-mounted microphone on the end of a bendable arm connected to a cassette recorder that was mounted into the ceiling above the driver’s seat so I could make high-end voice recordings while driving down the road. Many have been transcribed and are in this book. I spent ten grand on an Alpine amp, Tancredi equalizer, and Focal ES speakers for a top-end vintage sound system, fixed a leopard-skin couch-bed in the back, and drilled a hole in the floor to fit an oil funnel so I could take a pee without having to pull over. I named that van “Cosmo,” and Ms. Hud and I hit the road.

I’ve never cared much for destinations.

The idea of landing is too finite for my imagination and sense of song.

Give me a direction and a sixteen-lane highway

with room to swerve and explore along the way.

Like jazz, I prefer to see life as a river.

After a few months traversing the States and either sleeping on that leopard-skin bed or in a motel, Ms. Hud and I decided we were ready to commit to being road dogs, so we upgraded, purchased a twenty-eight-foot Airstream International CCD, hooked it up to the back of Cosmo, and towed our new home on the road behind us.

Now fully self-sufficient, Ms. Hud and I became what the trailer world calls “full-timers.” We carved trails from Manitoba to Guatemala and forty-eight of the forty-nine reachable United States of America in between. Our compass? Wherever we wanted to go. Our schedule? Whenever we wanted to go there. Roger Clemens is pitching in New York three days from now? That’s a three-day drive from Albuquerque, New Mexico, so we’ll head out in the morning and make the game. There’s a Cult concert in Detroit the next night? Perfect, we’ll swing by for that the day after Clemens takes the bump.

I also took my meetings with film directors on the road. For instance, if I was in Utah and headed east, I would schedule my guest to fly into Boulder, Colorado, the next morning and pick them up at the local airport. Then we would drive together and discuss the project for the next seven hours until I dropped them off at the airport in Lincoln, Nebraska, for their flight home. Behind the steering wheel has always been my favorite seat, and driving the highways of America has always been my ideal office.

We went on location to Rhode Island where I got to work with Steven Spielberg on Amistad, a film about a slave revolt aboard a Spanish schooner in 1839 and a case that reached the Supreme Court and became notable in the abolition movement. I also made The Newton Boys with my old friend who gave me my first shot in this business, Richard Linklater. It was about an outlaw gang of brothers who were the most successful train and bank robbers in history. The man I portrayed was “Willis Newton,” who was from my hometown of Uvalde, Texas. One of the originators of outlaw logic, he’d rather shoot the lock than use a key any day.

Ms. Hud and I enjoyed boondocking and the trailer park life, especially the people we met and observed along the way. For me, this was Acting and Storytelling 101, a front-row seat to real characters in real life. It was live, not Memorex; behavior, not attitude. I wrote in my diary and recorded in my mic daily.

Trailer parks are full of renegades, runaways, professional clowns, rock band guitarists, down on their luckers, wildlife lovers, 4:00 p.m. cocktailers, book readers, retired couples, single mothers, unicyclers, inventors, patteners, gardeners, dreamers, lost souls, hippies, motorheads, meth cookers, million milers, and iron your own suit at 6:00 a.m.’ers. One thing they all appreciate is minding their own business, and you minding yours.

“If the door’s shut, don’t come knockin,” is one of the first rules of trailer park livin. Sure, I heard “Matthew McConaughey’s staying in the park” many times, but after a few waves and head-high howdys, everyone always respected my privacy, because for the most part everyone honored trailer park rules. When they didn’t, the rest of the park let them know.

On the other hand, if you did wanna meet people, in the words of Bobby “Thin Lizzy” Robinson at the La-Z-Daze Mobile Home Park in Quartzsite, Arizona, Just open the hood of your truck, plenty of people’ll come to help ya.

Ms. Hud and I took our time on the road and went where we pleased when we wanted to, keepin the shiny side high, the rubber side low, and if you ever get in a rush just leave early, just like Robby “Cricket” McKenzie told us when we were pulling out of a creek-side trailer park in Gadsden, Alabama.

Common sense is like money and health, once you have it, you have to work to keep it.

On one film shoot Ms. Hud and I settled into the trailer park on the Squamish Nation Indian reserve just south of the Second Narrows Bridge in Vancouver, Canada. The chief of the reservation, Mike Hunt (yes, that was his name), and I soon became buddies. Livin on the river, the Squamish were adept fishermen. But they’d become particularly efficient at the art of catching coho salmon. Instead of venturing out in their canoes with bait and hooks, they now walked into the shallow stream and simply lined up an alley of stones leading into the open entrance of an abandoned shopping cart from the local supermarket. It wasn’t much of a sport, none at all really, but it was highly reliable. I would cook beef rib-eye steaks on the outdoor grill of my Airstream and trade them for coho salmon freshly captured in the steel baskets on wheels.

One day a paparazzo moved into the trailer park looking to snap pictures of me. Chief Hunt and his brothers went to him and told him he was not welcome on the reservation.

“Why?” the paparazzo asked.

“Because, we are a tribe here, and you are making one of our brothers uncomfortable.”

“Well, too bad,” the paparazzo defended, “I pay my rent and this is a free country!”

“Not on this reservation, it’s not.”

Chief Hunt and his brothers escorted the guy off the reservation that night. Not only did I never see him again, he never saw me—he didn’t get a single photo.

Six weeks later, when I was done filming and packing up to leave, Chief Mike and his brothers gave me a parting gift, a hand-carved canoe paddle engraved with the Squamish Nation’s thunderbird symbol.

“The paddle is what gives the Squamish Nation its direction on the water,” Chief Hunt said. “May this one be your compass and watch over you on your travels, brother Matthew.” From that day on I have affectionately called my twenty-eight-foot International CCD Airstream “the Canoe.”

Greenlight.

Localize to customize. Adapt to modify. The Renaissance man is at home wherever he goes.

It was just after sundown somewhere along the Clark Fork River in western Montana.

I’d been driving since eight that morning, so I was pretty tired and looking for a trailer park to stretch, rest, and catch the last Pac-12 college football game on my satellite TV. With the last town too far behind me and the next one fifty miles ahead, I was in the middle of nowhere when I saw a campground sign in my headlights on the right. I immediately slowed down and took the dark dirt road off the highway.

I drove down the pitch-black pine-tree-lined trail until the path was no more. I stopped, looked around—no one, no facilities, nothing. Ms. Hud and I got out of Cosmo, the Canoe hitched behind us, to suss out the situation and look for a clue. Nothing. Then, through the pine forest, about forty yards farther into the woods I saw the small radiating orange ebb-and-flow ember of a cigarette being smoked. I killed the ignition, locked the doors, and with Ms. Hud at my side, headed for the glow.

On approach, I noticed a figure in an all-white chef’s uniform, smoking, leaning against the wall, left leg straight, right knee bent, reminding me of my brother Pat back at high school. As soon as I got within earshot, the figure asked, “Lookin for a spot?” “Yeah,” I said, “with an open southern sky for my satellite dish.”

Without a nudge in his stance or a pause in his puff, he motioned his head high and right. “Talk to Ed at the bar, he’ll set you up.” Ms. Hud and I headed in that direction and came to a large hardwood door in the side of the same massive barnlike structure the chef was leaning against. I opened it and a wave of light, music, and revelry came blaring out. It was a tavern, and it was Saturday night. With thick enough walls to not know it until you were in it, the place was packed, hopping.

We stepped inside and looked for the bar when the big brown welcoming eyes of a Cheyenne barmaid bounced up and introduced herself.

“Hi, I’m Asha, come on in, anything I can get you?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m lookin for Ed.”

She nodded across the room. “That’s him behind the bar over there.”

I glanced up to a busy bar and then to the back of the balding, long gray-haired head behind it. “Thanks, Asha.”

“Sure, need anything lemme know,” she said, winking as she danced back into the fray.

Ms. Hud at my heel, we crossed to the bar.

“Hey, Ed?!” I raised my voice to get his attention over the hubbub.

“Yeah, whaddaya want?!” Ed yelled from a beer tap, barely glancing over his shoulder.

Busy serving the local crowd what he already knew they wanted, Ed wasn’t looking for any new business tonight. He stayed with his pour.

Ed had an epileptic tic, where his face contorted and his tongue stretched out of his mouth without his choosing, but his condition had obviously done nothing to dampen his superiority as this saloon’s concierge.

“A spot for my trailer with an open southern sky!” I yelled across the bar.

“A what in the sky?!” he squawked, finally turning to see who this uninvited wahoo was already asking for things that weren’t on the menu.

“A spot with an open southern sky,” I pointed, “so my satellite dish can get reception for the nine o’clock football game.”

Now crossing to serve that beer he’d just poured, he glanced my way on his way by and said, “Nope.”

“Hey, you Matthew McConaughey?” a voice to my left drunkenly asked.

Making sure to stake my ground and not appear to be an easy prey for their night’s entertainment,*4 I answered in a semi-smartass way, “For twenty-nine years,” I said. “Why?” Too drunk to catch my dis, a big smile came across the guy’s face and he said, “Shi-iit, I knew it!”

He grabbed my hand and shook it.

“I’m Sam, sit down and lemme buy you a drink, introduce you to my uncle Dave. He’s in the shitter right now, be back in a minute.”

I decided this place looked more fun than a football game, and since they weren’t offering a southern sky anyway, I obliged.

“Lemme take my dog for a walk and set up my trailer, be back in thirty.”

I left the bar to walk out when I heard a voice bark from the bar, “That’ll be eleven bucks! Take any spot you want, they’re all open.” It was Ed.

Thirty minutes later I walked back in and bellied up to the bar between Sam and his uncle Dave.

“What’re ya drinkin, Matthew?”

“Double Cuervo on the rocks,” I said loud enough for Ed to hear, but he didn’t.

“Hey, sugar,” Sam said to Asha, who was passing by, “give my good friend Matthew here a triple Cuervo on the rocks, will ya, sweetie?” “Sure thing, Sam, and you know my name’s Asha, so quit bein afraid to call me by it,” she said with a wink.

I looked around the place. Everybody was smiling, flirting, finishing dinner, taking shots, dancing, and playing slot machines. They’d all been here before, it seemed, and most of them for years, especially Sam.

“Hey, honeybun, get us another round, will ya,” he flirted to another passing barmaid later.

“Three more over here, baby doll!” he said to another the next time.

I noticed that each time he called them by a general term of endearment, they each then asked him to call them by their own names instead. The girls were not threatened; they were not concerned with gender politics. If anything, they showed affection for him.

Between rounds four and five, Sam got up to go to the restroom. I asked his uncle Dave, who had been quietly sitting on the other side of me the entire night, “What’s with Sam calling every barmaid ‘sweetie,’ ‘honey,’ ‘baby,’ or ‘sugar,’ and every barmaid asking him to call her by her name instead?” Uncle Dave took a sincere swig before looking me in the eye and giving me his answer.

“Sam lost his first and only wife two weeks after they were married six years ago, and after six years of comin in here with him six nights a week, he still don’t remember any of the barmaids’ names. Hasn’t remembered or been able to say any woman’s name since. He can’t.” Around 3:00 a.m., with the bar thinned out but the party far from over, I was rolling dice against the wall with a dozen of the late-night patrons. Josie, the tavern’s hotel manager, was thirty-five years old, had crooked teeth, a receding hairline, a pair of 34-inch-waist Dickey pants leather belted around her 26-inch midsection, a loyal black Labrador by her side, and a thirteen-month-old son sleeping in the baby carriage on the floor next to her—all credit to a one-night stand she had a little over two years back when she was traveling through here just like me and met a dude named Jack in this very bar, where they proceeded to head to his hotel room and shag up for the night. When she woke up the next morning, Jack was gone but his black Lab was still bedside, so she “hung around the place for a while,” and a couple months later she found out she was pregnant. Tonight, Josie was “rollin the dice for a new set of tires cus last month I drove eight miles on the flat one and ruined the other three.” Then there was Donnie, an organic mushroom farmer who was currently livin in a cabin with Donna. The drunker he got, the more sentimental and concerned he got about all the locals “thinkin he’s sleepin with Donna.” “D and D,” everyone kept teasing them. You see, Donna was married, but her man had to take a drilling job in Alaska, where he’d been working for the last year. She admitted she thought about shaggin up with Donnie because “He’s a man, and I’m a woman,” but said, “I’m just helping him out cus he don’t have a place to stay and I got an extra room.” Donna had two master’s degrees, but “degrees don’t get you too far in Montana,” she said. “I work at the Humane Society fifty miles from here in Missoula all day then bartend here at night.” Then she showed me the hair she’d been growing on her legs and armpits since August. “Gettin ready for winter,” she said.

Bill and Susie had been married twenty-two years and ran a bar fifteen miles up the road that never paid for itself, so they retired from working altogether. Susie swore that being the mother to Bill’s two teenage sons from his previous marriage was a lot harder than making that bar stay open. Bill said that Montana’s greatest export is its kids. Primary education was excellent, and most parents were good ones, but since it was so hard to make a livin in this state, all the kids leave to find work. “But once they make enough money to get by, they all move back home, cus there’s nothin like Montana.” Glad they didn’t have a spot with an open southern sky.

Greenlight.

One of the great freedoms of trailer life is that you can hitch up, leave, and find a new backyard whenever you want. Chase down sporting events, concerts, boondock in the desert, wake up to a grizzly bear out your window on an Idaho river morning, hike through the Antelope Valley of Utah, meet people like I did in Montana, or get a Port Authority escort through Times Square in New York City, but you also need a place to get your mail. I especially liked the Golden, Colorado, summers and the Austin, Texas, autumns, so I got a P.O. box at a park in each one. These two destinations served as “home bases” for me, two addresses where Ms. Hud and I would stop and stay awhile, read my mail, hardwire to city amps and water, hang out with old friends, and plan our next adventure.

White Collar Prayers

Ever been to a Baptist church in the Deep South?

They pray real prayers.

They pray for things they need.

God, if I’m sick bring me a doctor.

God, if I’m sued bring me a lawyer.

God, if I’m cold bring me a blanket.

God, if I’m hungry bring me some food.

Blue Collar Prayers.

Then there’s the privileged pray-ers.

They pray fake prayers.

They pray for things they want.

God, help me win this game.

God, make momma buy me that dress.

God, get me an Oscar nomination.

God, let me get that yacht.

White Collar Prayers.

We need to quit asking God to answer these types of prayers.

He’s busy, trying to get a new set of tires.