When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

I have learned some things. Modern life is warfare without end: take no prisoners, leave no wounded, eat the dead--that's environmentally sound.

The only person more cynical than a drunk is a reformed drunk.

Lady bartenders live a tougher life than anybody knows.

I had done either too much coke or too little, a constant problem in my life.

Consideration touches more deeply and longer than passion.

There's no accounting for laws. Or the changes wrought by men and time.

Home is where you hang your hangover.

Youth endures all things, kings and poetry and love. Everything but time.

I knew the men were probably terrible people who whistled at pretty girls, treated their wives like servants, and voted for Nixon every chance they got, but as far as I was concerned, they beat the hell out of a Volvo-load of liberals for hard work and good times.