Welcome to Home of the Brave. I'm Scott Carrier. Back in 1984, my friend, the radio producer Larry

Massett, sent a proposal to the National Endowment for the Arts and the Smithsonian Institution,

saying he wanted to drive around the country interviewing people who were, quote,

on the road, unquote. Hitchhikers, truck drivers, criminals,

in order to document, I don't know, their peculiar cultural values

and social mores for posterity, something like that, and they said okay, gave him

five thousand dollars.

They supported projects like that back then. Larry asked me to help him and I said, sure.

We started in California in my Saab 99,

but then it broke down in Santa Fe, New Mexico,

so we bought a 1974 Delta 88, basically a Cadillac for $400 and drove

it to Key West, then up to Washington, D.C. where a starfish, Larry, was taking home in the trunk, started

to smell so much, we couldn't get in the car. So he bought a Chevy van for a thousand dollars

that we drove to Bozeman, Montana, along with all the taped interviews we'd collected,

and Barrett Golding helped us mix the show together at the public radio station there, KGLT. Maybe it was 1985, more than 30 years ago, a different

era for sure. But this is the show as it aired on all things considered.

This backpack, you see here, that's my home. Okay? What kind of life is that?

I'm doing what I want. Nothing holds me. I can go from here to Interstate 270.

You stand there and stick out my thumb and catch a ride. I might have

ten cars go by me, maybe 50 cars will go by me before I get one ride.

But I never know.

It's a chance I take.

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