Perhaps it is because I have been a man of the world, so to speak. I think my parents went on a business trip of my dad’s shortly before I was born and so I was Born to Drive, so to speak. From going down the Mississippi River on a raft with my cousins and brother Tim when I was 15-years-old to hitchhiking around the country as a college student or hopping a freight train to Seattle with a group of friends including Janet and Tim — a shout-out to them since they are Hues subscribers — and hitching back home via San Francisco and hitching back and forth between Milwaukee and Alcorn State University in Lorman, Mississippi where I attended college for two years and then there is the travel to Mexico and China. And there was the time spent on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in eastern Montana.

My guiding light was always know where you are and what you don’t know. In other words, be present at all times and don’t be tripping off into some fantasy that the world revolves around me and so I could do and say what I wanted because I was the center of the universe.

If I had that attitude, I would have been dead a long time ago or at least lost forever in a world of my own making.

When I started hitchhiking, I would always engage the person who was graciously giving me a ride — if for no better reason than to keep him alert and awake — in conversation, often asking them question after question until I found a common bond or ground that we had together. And I can honestly say that after hundreds of these rides — all the way through the thousands of interviews that I have conducted — that there is always a common ground that we have as human beings.