When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

I had done either too much coke or too little, a constant problem in my life.

I have learned some things. Modern life is warfare without end: take no prisoners, leave no wounded, eat the dead--that's environmentally sound.

I try to stay two drinks ahead of reality and three behind a drunk

...the sun rose each morning to stare into my face with the blank but touching gaze of a lovely retarded child.

There's no accounting for laws. Or the changes wrought by men and time.

Lady bartenders live a tougher life than anybody knows.