We lived in the oldest subdivision in Fort Walton Beach, Ocean City. It was enlisted military dependents and retired couples raising their divorced daughters' children.

Brenda hated that tract house. But it was the best I could do, at the time.

It was close enough to work I could ride a ten-speed bike, which gave her the car to drive, a rusted-out Peugeot 404 we called Roland. Roll on, Roland.

Please.

Potter was attending Okaloosa-Walton Community College in Niceville, taking a CETA Program bricklaying course. He was drawing unemployment and the GI Bill. He had a band, the Crooked Island String Band, sometimes called the Crooked Smilin' String Band, and played beer joints and biker bars around Fort Walton Beach and Panama City. And sometimes he laid bricks, off the books.

Potter worked pretty hard, for a househusband.

Suzette had a househusband before it was cool.

Sometimes on the way home from Niceville--Potter and Suzette lived on Choctawhatchee Bay at Miramar Beach--Potter would stop by our house and pick and sing with Brenda, so Owen got the idea that picking and singing was something you did yourself, with family and friends, not something you saw the Monkees do on television.

Owen was three.

One day Owen was riding his polystyrene horse, Gaylord, wearing his cowboy hat, cap pistols and holsters, and plastic boots. Potter went by on his way to the bathroom.

He said, "You're a stone cowboy, Owen."

On the way back, Owen was singing, "I'm an Owen-stone cowboy," to the tune of "Rhinestone Cowboy," so there must have been radio music in the home, too.

And when we went out to Potter and Suzette's, on weekends, he'd see people playing music. And cooking and eating, drinking and telling stories.

One weekend there was an interservice jump meet at Hurlburt Field. Jumpfest '76.

Special forces troops from all branches of the military.

I took Owen and we walked around the pit area, where contestants were packing their own chutes, making sure all their gear was shipshape.

I felt like these men looked at me as if I were their equal. Not at killing someone with your bare hands. But at writing.

I was at writing as they were to a draftee in the service: a member of a small elite.

I called a portion of a book "Readfest '76."

It takes a certain confidence in yourself to go against the grain for 35 years. With no pension at the end. To flout the rules, and listen to your own inner voice. Your inner passion. To follow your bliss.

It had only been five years, then.

I had no idea I had 30 years to go. With no relief in sight.

That at 35 years I'd be as far away from self-sufficiency as ever.

I thought five years was a long time.