On January 26th 1974, I awoke in Fresno, California, alone. It was my twenty-fifth birthday, and I was living in a garage that I had remodeled into an apartment in exchange for rent. I was the quintessential starving artist. Bread, peanut butter, wine and art were my diet. Cheap wine. Good art. No sales, and a few “broke” friends. It was about an hour after rising that I started to cry, and I did so, off and on, for the whole day. It was an orgy of self-pity and a mental flogging that I was lucky to get through alive.

I had come face-to-face with the fact that, other than surviving my Southern Baptist rearing and a short stint in the Navy, I had not accomplished much in 25 years. I determined that I had been a coward – I had not put myself “on the line” in enough situations. I decided to change that right then and there. I would find ways to take some risks even if it meant actually risking the life I had been so protective of.