Q: READFEST 2006 is about how you became a militant hick. Or came to embrace your hickness. Your hick heritage. You traced your roots and found out you were a hick.

You have hick pride.

A: A straight white male, of a certain age, from the south.

That's what I am.

What else could I be?

Q: Are you militant about it?

A: No, but I don't deny it.

I'm the whining boy, I don't deny my name.

"Whining Boy Blues."

I'm not whining, I'm playing the blues.

Ain't it a bitch. Brother.

Q: Is it something to be proud of? Being a hick?

A: I'm not proud of it. That's silly, to be proud of something accidental. In the sense caused by fate. Not under one's control. That's like being proud to be black.

But I'm not ashamed of it.

Hicks have many good qualities.

Not all hicks are alike.

There are hicks who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan and there are hicks who worked with black leaders for a peaceful transition from segregation to integration. When my father died, black people who had served with him on the city council, black business leaders, black ministers came to the viewing at the funeral home and told my mother how much they respected him, and how much worse the struggle for civil rights in Delray Beach would have been without white leaders like him.

Q: He was a nigger-lover. You're a nigger-lover.

A: Thank you. Thank you very much.

And your name is...?