The year I went to Palm Beach Junior College I lived in my old room, at home, with my parents, and drove my brother Bill's car to school, in Lake Worth. Bill was a freshman at Florida State University, and wasn't allowed to have a car in Tallahassee.

I was in an advanced placement English class, and met some students there I'd have coffee with, before class.

I'd drive up to the campus early and drink coffee and read magazines in the library before class.

On the drive up, I'd listen to classical music on the car radio. I drove up A1A, the beach road, and if I saw some fish hitting in a school of bait fish, I'd pull over, run down to the surf, and throw a spoon in.

The first time I drove home, and stopped at a light in colored town, a woman asked me what kind of fish I was selling. She recognized Bill's car.

When I was a kid my father left the keys in his car. Who would steal it? Everybody knew whose car was whose.

We were no longer that small a town, but black people knew who white people were, and what they drove, and some white people knew the same things about some black people. What family they came from, whether they were good niggers or bad niggers.

Anyhow, I started keeping the fish I caught and selling them in colored town, on the way home.

I drove home Military Trail, and listened to WSWN, Belle Glade.

WSWN played hillbilly music. Belle Glade, Clewiston, and Pahokee were rural.

Mel Tillis is from Pahokee.

Delray had dairy farmers, but also farmers who grew green beans, or bell peppers, and farmers who grew gladiola flowers. There used to be a Gladiola Festival in Delray Beach. Of course, Delray also had construction, for homes for retirees, and tourism, for winter visitors. The communities around Lake Okeechobee didn't have those.

Mel Tillis is one of the singers on the CD Old Dogs, of Shel Silverstein songs. Tillis, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Reed, and Bobby Bare.

Over the years I have come to like the music of those four men, and like Shel Silverstein, as a songwriter. It's interesting that a big city Jew who drew cartoons for Playboy magazine would be drawn to Nashville. You'd expect to see him in the Carnegie Deli with Broadway Danny Rose. He also wrote children's books.

Was the sexual revolution going on when I was at Palm Beach Junior College?

I think of the scene in Second Best where e-man screws the married crossing guard, to boost his self-esteem, and she says, "Come on my belly." And he does.

In that sense, it's always been going on. Tacky behavior.

And I was left out, or left myself out.

Is an hour of pleasure worth a lifetime of shame?

You have to listen to Hugh Hefner spout the Playboy philosophy.

You have to look at the ads for conspicuous-consumption goods.

Sometimes I would drive home Range Line Road, and pass the gravel road leading back into the property the painter Debierue lived in, in The Burnt Orange Heresy.

He was kept afloat by a group called Les Amis de Debierue.

I didn't know, then, that one day I would make up a group called The Friends of Jack Saunders, who kept me afloat. Donations not tax-deductible.

At the cheerleader said in Texas Celebrity Turkey Trot, late, late in the telethon, "Come on, you cheap redneck motherfuckers--give!"

It's getting late.

The summer Bill was home, and I was out of school, before he dropped out of college and got married and I reenlisted in the Air Force, because I couldn't take my father's glares at the supper table any more, Bill and I drank in Kay's Place.

Kay's was full of pensioners, retired enlisted men, from the service. They drank on the tab until payday and then endorsed their checks to Kay.

Lee Marvin playing Hickey in The Iceman Cometh.

The jukebox in Kay's was mostly country music.

Two songs I remember were "There Stands the Glass" and "Hello, Walls."

I remember Webb Pierce and Faron Young, singing them.

If you want to send a shiver down your spine, listen to Ted Hawkins sing "There Stands the Glass," on his The Next Hundred Years album.

Died of untreated high blood pressure.

Duke's in a new band playing at the Blue Orleans restaurant in Blue Mountain Beach. The Blue Orleans Blues Band.

I saw him Sunday at The Red Bar.

He said to come out and see them.

He said they're playing blues.

Not rock-and-roll. Blues.

Nigger blues.

Duke's white. Of course, he's from Louisiana.

If a white boy can play the blues, it's Duke Bardwell.

Of course, Duke played bass with Dread Clampitt, a reggae-bluegrass fusion band.

The Reggae Cowboys write songs about the Old West.. Aaron Neville loves the Sons of the Pioneers.

Of course, he has a hellhound on his trail.

Ha ha, me and Larry Schlueter, back there breathing down his neck.

Q: Aaron Neville isn’t pointing at you and Larry. He’s holding the phone, and talking to a listener on the phone. It just looks like he’s pointing at you.

A: He’s pointing at us. He’s saying, "You see these two raggedy motherfuckers. The big one has a coffee stain down his T-shirt. You see what an entertainer has to put up with? Nicotine stains in his shorts."