Go for a drive in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Don't turn on your GPS. Just go with your

gut. Find yourself with a lot of choices. Left or right, up or down the mountain, turn back, or keep driving into the unknown.

Every choice decides your destiny, tipping over one row of dominoes, ignoring another, setting in motion your new life.

There might come a day you wonder, what would have happened if you'd turned left or back?

Maybe you wouldn't have gotten into that wreck or met the lover who broke your heart.

That kind of thinking can drive a man mad,

because what you could have done means nothing.

That road you could have taken, it evaporated, the moment you chose a different path.

You do it every day. Do you hit snooze or jump out of bed, drink coffee or tea? Try to beat a red light or slam on the brakes. Wear sensible shoes? Or... or... not to wear a little bottom shoes. We didn't have the money to buy no rougher shoes.

You got one thing, we was all just about broke.

Four out of five burglars agree.

Leather-bottomed alligator shoes are the wrong choice when you're setting out to

commit not one but two serious crimes. We looked around we got the bank we was gonna

get and there was a police in town so what we was gonna do is go up to his little station and we was going to kidnap it.

This story is all about four men, dead set on burglarizing a small town southern bank and

stealing all of its money after cutting into an almost impenetrable cannonball safe.

They're eight to nine inches thick with tunks and steel and none of us at that time know how to drill the doors on those things.

So we will cut into it with a burning bar.

If you know what a blowtorch is, think of a burning bar as a blowtorch on amphetamines,

a white- hot fiery knife that can cut through eight inches

of tungsten steel. The burglary crew stole torches and fuel tanks and then worked out the plan to kidnap a cop.

You know, snatch him, take his car, put the cutting torches,

...