Who knows where anything really begins?
For me, it may have started on the Mother Road—
Route 66 from Needles to Barstow.
Retracing the steps of Ma and Pa Joad,
I watched sweat drip from Daddy's face
and a man, hovering, watching, waiting,
while Daddy hung the rented swamp cooler
from Mama's car window. "No siree,  the man
said, you can’t cross this desert  without one—
heat'll do strange things to the mind!"

I was 7 years old. It was 1958...