Nicolai’s Reviews > Travels with Charley: In Search of America > Status Update

I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby. I knew that 10-12 thousand miles driving a truck alone and unattended, over every kind of road…represented the antidote for the poison of the professional sick man.

Who doesn’t like to be the center for concern? A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. … for I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness.