My dad was a telegraph operator for the Cotton Belt Railroad. He worked seven nights a week from 4 until midnight, no vacation.

I asked the man on the phone from the National Endowment for the Arts what this fellowship entailed, and he said, 'Well, first there's $10,000.' I asked him, 'Can I pay it in installments?'

It is part of the railroad business. But it is a setback. We are usually running seven days a week out of Fort Bragg now.

My dad wouldn't even start the car until he heard the click of every seat belt.

When I was 15, I was working for a radio band in Shreveport. Cliff Bruner, the hottest Texas fiddler of them all, was on the same package shows, playing for Jimmie Davis.

I wasn't really an old-time breakdown fiddler.