Quotes

There is something about driving in the dark in a really cool car on a three-hour road-trip, flying down the black-top behind a purple set of pop-up headlights, with a beautiful blonde in the passenger side who is sipping Peach Smirnoff Ice and dancing in her seat while we listen and sing along to old Tom Petty and ZZ Top, that is really fucking awesome. My life is magnificent voyage right now…

When I walked out of the house, I noticed the next door-neighbor had a mustard-yellow Corvette in his garage. I could only see the back of it. A young woman came out of the garage. I asked her about the car. She said, “I will go and get my dad!” Her father arrived and we had Corvette talks. His was a beautiful 1972, in mint condition. I got inside of it to see how it felt in comparison to my...

When I showed up I was in my rawhide chaps and rawhide jacket. She told me, “When I hugged you I wondered if that is what hugging a cow would feel like…”

Dusty and Karlee’s friend Tyler was there when I arrived. Dusty had told him I was coming on a motorcycle. Tyler said, “Wait. I think I saw him earlier. I saw a guy who was all dressed in rawhide and I thought the guy was too young to be dressed like that.” Dusty said, “Yeah, that was Stephen…”

Riding a motorcycle changes everything. I wore my black chaps, gray 1980’s cowboy boots, and 1980’s brown leather jacket all day, everywhere I went, including into stores like Canadian Tire to buy parts. Kids who are about 10 years old stared at me like I may have been the man who invented the word, ‘Cool.’ Other bikes give you the ‘heck yeah, biker brethren’ wave. Two girls in a car honked and waved. Being a biker seems like it is...

I took my motorcycle to town at about 10:00 to ride it around and get to know the city before my motorcycle license road-test at 13:00. I rode all over town, practicing turns and driving with traffic for over two hours. At 12:20 I was getting hot, so I went to take my coat off. I wanted to put my jacket in the trunk of the motorcycle, and I shut off the bike after practicing a parallel park on the...

This morning Dan and I jammed on guitars for an hour or two, conquering Steve Earle’s ‘Continental Trailway Blues.’ In the meantime, the wind really came up and as Dan and I were jamming, a chair outside slid right across the entire deck in front of us, Exorcist style. It was pretty eerie in the way it moved. Then as Nancy was making dinner, the door flew open on the back door. She shut it and then about an hour...

I went through Rhett’s closet and I picked out a cool cowboy shirt from him. Then I saw a 1970’s cowboy shirt that had belonged to my grandpa who passed away in 1989. Rhett saw the shirt of my grandpa in my closet in 2007 and asked if he could have it. I never told him that the shirt was really special to me as I could see how much he liked it. Today, over 10 years later, I saw...

The only time I ever drink coffee is when I go down to the store in Big Beaver with dad to play cards in the morning. I do that about once a year. That coffee went right to me. I could nearly see that caffeine marching through the veins of my arms! It was crazy. I had the shakes and my mind was so scattered I could hardly pay attention to the card-game. The morning crew all thought it was...

She is training and she said, “I can still feel it in my hands…” and told me the story. The ambulance got a call and they rushed to a senior citizen’s home where a 95 year old lady was not breathing. Protocol is to do work on her, so she did mouth to mouth on the lady and then she did chest compressions. She said that she broke her ribs doing the compressions and that is what she could still...

The average person in the Walmart in Minot, North Dakota, probably has a suspicion that I am starving myself to death. I am grossly underweight by standards there.

After exercising, I always drink beer. Just kidding. I don’t exercise.

John was telling me about Williston, North Dakota and he said, “They had a place in town, a strip club, called ‘The Stockmans.’ Yeah, they had the young heifers dancing in there. The place actually had corals for them, for dancing.”

John said he was in the marines and was stationed in Japan but he had been to South Korea in 1982. He said the bars in the smaller towns were still dirt floors in South Korea at that time. Wow! I told him to never go back if that is the memory he has of the country as it is a modern, concrete-society, today.

Ron was in his 70’s and he was with his wife and her friend. The ladies later went to the bar across the street and Ron said to me, “I’ve got to hang around with those two crazy women. But if I found one more crazy woman, I bet I’d be in trouble…” Ron was my favorite person I met in the city.

Ron was with his wife and her friend. They were in their 70’s. His wife told me I look familiar. I told her that makes sense as I am a movie-star. She believed me and asked, “What movies have you been in?” I said, “I will just give you some time. You will figure it out…” Her and the friend were looking at me and studying me. I came clean and said I was teasing them, and that I am...

Conversation with a custom’s officer. Him – “When is the last time you did drugs?” Me – “I don’t.” Him – “Do you have any cigarettes on you?” Me – “I don’t smoke.” Him – “Why is there a lighter in your consul?” Me – “Good one!”

‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’

Dad told me about a friend of his who drank a lot. He said, “One time someone went to wake him up. The guy waking him asked, ‘Hey…can you see me?’ The drunk guy responded, ‘Yeah…can you see me?’ I guess he thought he’d gone to another world.”

Dad and I sat at the table and chatted for a couple of hours. He told me a story about an old friend of his. He said that the old friend was a happy drunk and a really funny man. One time he got really drunk and bought a new pair of cowboy boots. When he woke up in the morning, he saw a new pair of boots by the bed. He thought that someone else was sleeping with his...

Her, Dad, and I went down to look at the cattle so that she could see the baby calves. Dad was telling a lot of fun stories and when we got back to the house she said to me, “He is exactly as you described him. I can see where you get your charm from!” Dad was very entertaining. I asked him to play some music for us so we went downstairs where he played keyboard and guitar at the...

She arrived and met me on the road at the highway. I welcomed her to Big Beaver. She looked at me with no beard and no mustache. She cocked her head, studying me and said, “You look different…” I said, “Handsome, hey? I like that you got to know me when I had a beard and then a terrible mustache, so you got to know my personality before you got to see how handsome I am. I am so tired...

Dad was washing the floor in the laundry-room/bathroom as I was dusting the corners to get rid of the cobwebs. I said, “This is a pretty weird situation for you and I…isn’t it?” He smirked. After I had vacuumed the floor dad asked, “You got the whole place clean before she gets here?” I said, “I am just washing my sheets.” He asked, “Did you put a lot of Bounce in them?” I said, “That’s later dad!”  He laughed at...

I have drank a lot more beer in the night and felt a lot better in the morning. But, I was on Death’s Door until about 15:00. Pilsner beer is poison. Tell everyone you know. I am not sure if I have ever been drunk on that beer before. Pilsner has a legendary reputation of giving a bad hangover and I have really learned it today. Pilsner and I are probably done. I had a headache that seemed intent on...

She was saying that someone should go and play the tambourine with the girl singing on stage. She said to me, “You should go do it. They won’t think it’s weird. Because it is you, they’ll expect it!”

The water in the well at the farm-house was freezing up because the light the runs at the top of the well, which keeps everything warm, had burned out. We changed the light and about an hour later there was water again at the house. I find it amazing how that works: just a regular light-bulb is in a vertical, circular, metal, culvert that is about 4 feet wide and it is about 5 feet deep to where the open...

I was driving very fast on the gravel road to get home. I came down the hill and was moving about 70 mph as I got into the flat. All of a sudden, in front of my lights, a massive porcupine was in the middle of the road. It was huge! I was moving too fast and I knew if I hit it that much damage was going to happen to the bottom of my car, so I went to...

I went to see my mom in the home, and I played music for her from my phone. I played songs that she used to sing with our family band, The Roadrunners, just to see how she would react to the songs she used to know to sing so well. When I played the songs, she stopped moving and the music absorbed her attention. She was unable to make the connection to sing along, but for a moment her foot...

The dentist hygienist told me that even though I have been away for years, I am doing good and I have fantastic dental hygiene. I take care of my teeth after spending all of my own money on braces 17 years ago… The dentist and the hygienist were remarking about how nice my teeth are. I told my hygienist, “Well, I have made a deal with me. I hate flossing, but I told me, ‘Look, I know flossing sucks. But,...

I had appointment with my dentist, so I raced up to see how the choppers are holding out. I am the poster-boy there. I had long bleached blonde hair when I initially went in 17 years ago with crooked teeth. When I got the braces off some time later time my hair was normal, and I was handsome with nice and straight teeth. It was a huge transformation, so they made me the ‘before’ and ‘after’ guy. “You can look...