Booktv visits montgomery, alabama to talk to local authors and tour the city at literary sites. For a complete television schedule, booktv. Org. Booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors, television for serious readers. Now we kick off the weekend with rinker buck. He describes his covered wagon journey on the oregon trail. Thank you for that introduction and i am glad to see so many people here. There would not be any booklovers left in savanna. I am especially happy to be here and i think the organizers because there is a rounding back in savanna, this lovely city. Which is typical of my life and the kind of things that have happened. In 1970 while a freshman in college i came down to participate in a Vista Program for there were any houses out there, just the old gullett community is remnants of plantations that had been there. I was there for a combined workstudy, Things College students in the 60s and 70s did. There was a male boat that only ran once or twice a week. They said there is a schoolteacher and if you are down at the bluffton docs every morning at 6 30, quarter to 7 you can get a ride over to the island every day so i got down there and there was this skinny guy, mid20s. Had a beautiful sunburn. I felt we belonged together. You can just tell this guy had a wacky upbringing just like me. Not every morning but the few mornings a week i would go to the island i would ride back and forth in a little metal skiff with a skinny guy named pat conroy. Pat went on, the first time i caught up with him, when the river was wide was made into a movie, john voigt played him. I have been to savanna a few times. My publicist at Simon Schuster told me almost a year ago Something Like that as we made preparations for the release of my book on the oregon trail, the savanna book festival, i didnt pay much attention because there were so many things going on but i just assumed it would be a venue where i go and give a presentation to warm up the audience by showing what the oregon trail looks like today and explaining my brother and i became the first to cross the trail in over a century. After that i do funny readings and everything is great. I didnt think much about it. Back to november, got to make sure you got a power point presentation ready, reading and all this stuff. Very sweet southern accent, apologized, dont remember her name, you dont have to worry about all that. You are going to be speaking in a church and we just find, if you dont mind my saying, stand up and read from the pages of the book is just so boring. She goes just come down here. Do i have to wear a tie . No, just come down here and tell the folks what makes you tick. I was immediately worried because i spent a lot of money over the years in some of the best offices of the most welltrained psychotherapists in the country and we have never figured out what makes me tick. That got me started. I will get to the oregon trail book in a bit and leave plenty of time for questions if that is what folks are interested in. I want to start this way. I stand before you as someone who with complete plausibility and no prior planning is not only the youngest aviator to fly america coasttocoast but the first person to take a covered wagon across the oregon trail in a century. How do you get to that level of weirdness . How does that happen . I thought i would start this way, talk about a subject that has always interested me. We tend to talk about important periods in life, christening, wedding, second wedding, third wedding, death and all this as Pivotal Moment in like, in the 70s, a book called passages was all about the traditional shared moments in life, passages we have to go through. The only problem i had was there are a lot of other passages equally more important than the official ones we recognize. For instance first job, all the crazy things that happen. When i got out of college and got a job at a great newspaper, writing obituaries. It had not occurred to me the way you spell a last name has any significance at all. People would be calling on the phone saying i am not dead, stuff like that. First job is important and that book will be reissued. Probably the most important period in most formative period is the adolescent turning in, 12, 13, 14, 15, maybe you have children or grandchildren, they say everything is starting earlier now but 1215, the adolescent turning in. This is the period you wake up one morning, everything has been going fine but all of a sudden something has changed. Some has to do with new chemistry in the body, but you wake up and it is like my hair isnt straight anymore. I come from the most embarrassing family on the planet. Catholicism why do they expect me to believe i am consuming the body of christ. All these things, the priests in school, you are just convinced your life is horrible and no one is more miserable than you. What happened to me was we had an eccentric household, in northern new jersey in the middle of the republican hunt country. Only problem being we were the only democrats in the hall county. We had 11 kids which was unusual. My dad was quite eccentric. We had a carriage collection of 25 or 30 wagons and when we got bored with that we started building airplanes out in the barn, my dad would come home after a big days work, a Yellow School bus parked by the barn and he would take us all down and a lot of kids, we went to the dairy queen the next town over in this eccentric Yellow School bus. I had a lot to be embarrassed about. My dad at the time was associate publisher of look magazine, publisher, owner of a magazine in those days we keep the title publisher for themselves, very involved in politics and the civil rights struggle and antivietnam protests and so forth and so on. At that age really got embarrassed. When im 12, 14 years old, horrible age to have all the republican neighbors really know you come from a crazy family. My adolescent turning in, what i did was i didnt go out and get grumpy or seek out or try to borrow or whatever. I became a reader, big reader, reading is so important for the formation of a writer. What would happen is my father had a Beautiful Library with a walkin fireplace. I loved to read. I was a little precocious and i went down there and saw on the shelves, couldnt miss it, big long shelf of all the same book and i said the collected speech hes of Winston Churchill. I took them upstairs and started reading a way. Really fascinating, i cant believe i did it but i learned all about the india question and the irish question, churchill had to stand up as first lord of the admiralty and a battle in turkey during world war i and all this stuff and the other book i found was really great. I was mad at my father about it for a while, six volume biography of Abraham Lincoln by carl sandberg. I went all the way through that. My little brother have you finished reading the biography of lincoln . You started it at easter and it was now august or something. I got mad at my father because you get to the end of the six volume biography of Abraham Lincoln and the 6 volume is a condensed version of everything. I am going dad why didnt you tell me . It was almost like cliff notes here. He goes i didnt want to spoil the experience for you. What would happen is because my dad was very active in politics and a big wheel in the democratic party, he quit his job in 1959 to work for the Kennedy Campaign for a year and went back to it and so forth, the people that came out to our place on weekends, we would take them for Carriage Rides and things like that. They were newspaper columnists, politicians and so forth. I could drop a few names and you would recognize them but that is not important. They would sit around and get in these big debates. What are we going to do about vietnam and what is the impact going to be on Lyndon Johnson and i am sitting there, the only kid in the family at all interested in listening to this and the 60s were all about what do you think, this whole conversation started and all these people sitting around and what do you think is going to happen . I go i think we have to go back and consider what Winston Churchill said about neville chamberlain. These guys are all your kids like that . We got talking about Martin Luther king and the civil rights struggle. There was a point when Martin Luther king in addition to his civil rights activities came out and opposed the vietnam war which i felt defined him. He said this morality is going to apply across everything, not just civil rights. It was very controversial at the time. My dad was one of the few people defending king doing this. It was a nice beautiful fall day, beautiful views out the windows of our place, fire crackling and everything, everybody sitting around, what do you think . I you really need to consider this in light of the free soil debates in congress in 1854. I was in volume 4 of sandberg. What was great about this is writing was working for me, being a reader and a big writer was working for me. My dad recognized me. None of the other kids were interested in this kind of intellectual engagement. My father because of the depression, his family had been so wiped out by the depression he never graduated from high school and they didnt have equivalency degrees or anything like that. He became publisher of look magazine with no education, just selftaught. He started exhibiting this extraordinary interest in me, later it became meddling and in the oregon trail book i write about it a little bit because he was too involved but what he was doing was encouraging me, all my history papers he would send to his friends and some of them including historians, but it was a way of getting recognition, this adolescent turning and was working for me in a certain way. The next thing i remember i am dying to share with you, pretty significant prestigious thing that happened, i went to a Little School in new jersey, benedictine boys academy, kind of like the Little School that could. We showed up with a Station Wagon full of kids from the track meet and all the others, rich school showed up with big buses, they had guys massage your legs and stuff like that, we were just this little it was kind of an antiquated place in some ways and they had a tradition there in the mid 60s of freshman hazing, seniors and juicers and any upperclassman could hayes of freshman, ask them to do whatever they wanted like a senior could tell you to shine his shoes and you were supposed to carry a shoeshine kid around and i could tell who the nerds in my class would be right away because they were running around with shoe kits practically begging the senior to tell them to shine his shoes. One of these little freshman ran by, he was in my class, shine my shoes and he did. Kind of learning there were ways around the rules but i did get to the bus stop one day, two weeks of freshman hazing and there was a lady that came by, still remember her name, agnes jenks and she came by in this battered up bug and she was kind of old, had a lot of liver spots and her jowls, whenever we were cutting at the bus stop or doing something we shouldnt be doing she would go by in this volkswagen, the guys use to moon her a lot and she would just this senior goes, volkswagen coming up, the senior says to me shine a bare ass moon to the moon lady and i did it. I figured i cant get out of this one, he is a senior. My culpability is very low because my accountability is very low because the senior made me do it. I gave her a really good bare ass moon. She screeched to a halt, stops at a pay phone, calls the police. Before the bus where is the bus . Before the bus could get there the cops come, they arrested me and took me to the station. It helped my career. It helped me immensely because everybody at school, yes and when the cops i got to the police station, the cops what is the statute . I got driven back to school in a police car. The kids were hanging out the window. And in those days we had seems antiquated, probably giving you some good information here. In those days Catholic Schools had somebody called the dean of discipline. Father arthur. He said i got you now he says i could give you weeks in detention but i got something in store for you. The worst punishment possible. I go okay, i am calling your dad at work and telling him about this. I get home that night and my dad is sitting there. I know it is serious because he is home on time. He didnt go to the aa meeting on the way home, he came straight home. He goes sun, and he is really angry, i am going to give you a good lesson. I am not going to get angry. I am going to show you how this defect in your character, this exhibitionism, i am going to show you how that can be turned for the good of the world and i go okay. Go upstairs to your room and write a letter of apology to this woman. That is a great idea. I will do it. I went up there and i remember, i was one of the first kids in the neighborhood, this is the point in Communications Technology when we were making the transition from the manual to the electric typewriter and i had a portable typewriter i loved and it had a big heavy plastic case that closed over it and later i could drive it around on my motorcycle so it was great. I went up there and i must have known i was going to be i must have known there was some significance but i didnt at that age but had an unconscious knowledge because i rolled some carbon in and when i actually got to write about this which was when i sat down to write the passage i found the carbon so i took the letter to my dad and gave it to him and these are not exact but this is pretty close paraphrase. I handed it to my dad and he started reading it and through a log on the fire, you cannot imagine how humbled i am to have to write you under these circumstances. I had no idea that my thoughtless schoolboy prank would have such an impact on a woman of your advanced age and hysterical temperament. And it just went on and on. Another sentence was the sun glinting through the windows of your volkswagen, shimmering off your liver spots and jowls reminded me that i had made a terrible mistake. My father is reading this, his hand started to shake. I cant send this to this lady and you boobytrapped it. She is going to die from a heart attack and then we will really be sued. He packed it up and threw it in the fireplace. Again, writing was working for me. My older brother would confront my father and have a fight. I knew that was the wrong strategy so i got to maneuver around him and i said it is a good letter, that is right. I will give you one other example because my notes go on and on and then we will talk about the oregon trail a little and get some questions. Writers talk about this pretentious thing. I read Northrop Frye as a boy and literary life was there are things, specific things that happen to you that put you in the direction of becoming a writer. The other thing i remember was i was in high school and this Little School was trying to become a bigger and better place and it now is, it is very successful secondary school but in those days everybody in the class had to do really well, one or two advanced placement exams would help you get into a Better College and they were trying to get a sense of good secular colleges and not just Catholic Schools so meanwhile, i became this obsessive reader. My strategy works really well for me, i would read ahead the whole syllabus and by mid october i had the whole syllabus read for whatever portions we had and i could spend the rest of the time reading what i wanted to read. What i wanted to read was novels. What i thought novel mend, it is novel because it has sex and that is great. Instead of reading my history some nights i would read what happened was i got into take the ap exam, you have to get a perfect score. There were three essay questions and multiplechoice, multiple choice was easy but the three essay questions were the only three you were going to get and whatever you got you had to answer. So he said look, if you dont know the material just try anything because if you dont answer that question you will really be in trouble. I get in there and my big essay question was tell us about the alien sedition acts. The only thing that was the night i was reading lolita. Oh man. What am i going to do. I thought about it and i didnt know anything about it. Aliens and sedition and i was very full of myself, i would read harpers magazine and i do remember reading a sentence where someone compared the blacklist period in the 50s to the alien sedition acts. It was bad. Kind of like carl sandbergs biography, all about how he suspended habeas corpus during the civil war and all these other things he imposed on the south. All right. They gave me an out. Dont be afraid to reflect on the significance of the alien sedition acts on future events in american history. Okay. We are good. So the opening sentence, i can still remember it, no historian could possibly analyze the nefarious effect of the alien sedition acts without contemplating their influence on president Abraham Lincolns suspension of habeas corpus during the civil war. The priests at the Catholic Schools are great because they teach you all the shortcuts. The priest said we all had to study latin, if you use a latin phrase, put what it means, habeas corpus, give me the body. I put that in. I tell you, so a big deal in the school, ap history, all the papers come back and he calls you and alone and deliberately holds the paper down lowend doesnt give you what gives you a big lecture about your self and everything they are scored 125. I got a 5. That question must be this really impressed me. This had a big influence on me because i realized it is all about the writing. You need a lot of knowledge but in the end it is all about the writing because i didnt know what the alien sedition act was. These things are graded by collegelevel historians. I did find. It is all about the writing. Dont be afraid to go in strange directions. I know you want to hear about the covered wagon trip. The adolescent turning in forced upon me a regimen of welcome reading but i would get romantically tantalized with all the reading i was doing, there was a period at 19 to 20 when i thought it was the most awful thing in the world that i hadnt been alive during the civil war. There is no way of making a life in america if you didnt start out after being a civil war soldier. I was very impressionable and vicarious. Reading pushed me in vicarious directions. When i became fascinated by the oregon trail and all the things about the trail that were true that they never taught us in school, you would not find in a hollywood movie, i came across the line the last documented crossing of the oregon trail was in 1909. My autism, my whole sense of things, it didnt occur to me especially since i had a horseback farm, that it might be a strange response, that is the book i should do, lets take a covered wagon across and write about the oregon trail. People would say you are crazy. You are never going to get there. The wheels are going to break. You are such a weirdo. I am going i know, but it feels normal to me. So we bought a team i got my brother to come along, he is a much more experienced horsemen than i, he can fix anything. I bought a team of mules from the amish in missouri. They are not allowed to have cell phones and communicate in a modern way. That is why you call them on your cell phone at night, because you know he will be out in a barn doing chores. I bought a restored 1883 wagon, original covered wagon. Took us four months, 79 camps, we camped at fairgrounds and ranches. Truck stops are good because they have showers. My brother said we are going to get in trouble for going in. I bet you nobody says a word. Nobody said a word. Took us 29 days to cross wyoming, including our wheels breaking and somehow replacing those wheels. 29 days from fort laramie to cookeville, wyoming, parentless things we had to do and stuff like that. We had three showers and i remember each place we had those showers. You want to ask questions about that. I am all set. I just want to say to me even though i cant explain what im doing and im going back on a crazy adventure next year, watch those children and grandchildren because it is the adolescent turning in, great things can come from it. Thank you very much. [applause] i am sure there are a few people who have read my book or want to read it. You can ask any question you want. Go ahead. Each book has a distinct personality. The two mules, butte and back, they just dont like me. I took him 2,000 miles. They were in harness four month straight. Jake, the middle mule was a kindhearted gentle giant. At the end of the trip i wanted to keep the team together. They had been the same farm together all their lives, would have been tough on them if i sold them to the highest bidder. One of the ranchers understood this and said tell me what you got into and i will buy them and put them on retirement ranch. I had been out to idaho twice and the mules know who you are. They look at you getting out of the vehicle, it is that guy. But when they hear your voice, when i got out of that vehicle, those two mules, oh no not that guy jake comes over, still have a great relationship with jake. The mules are fine, this rancher had plans to use them so butte, the big eater, anything to do with eating, they feed her every night a bucket of bonbons. They are great to see and still healthy. The team had done something no other team had done. Needed the reward of a good retirement. When you have risks like this good things happen to you. I spoke with a rancher who has become a friend. Does the trail still exist . They would not let me come up with a power point. 2100 miles from saint joe, missouri to oregon city near portland, the Great American desert, 2,000 miles, highway 26, the reason it was repaved was one good example as early as the 1850s the former pioneers were driving cattle, it was being slaughtered, the beef industry was being created in places like omaha and so in world war i the need to get precooked meat over to europe was enormous, we had three main doughboys. Long stretches of the trail they had been driving cattle along was turned into a highway because combustion machine invented it was more efficient and reliable. Numb 1000 miles, farm and ranch roads, whatever road is there, trail markers along the way. The other thousand miles roughly is the original west, i mean the original, was cruel to this audience because there are some beautiful pictures. Northcentral to the idaho line, the oregon trail, 350 miles, read the pioneer journal, it is all federal lands, of that thousand miles we did sections 50 miles in nebraska, 70 or 80 miles in iowa and so forth. Of the thousand miles that are still accessible we did 500 miles. For the most part we followed the trail. Halfway through your book, really enjoyed it but i wish you had brought your brother with you. Are you going to take him on your next trip . How did you do your research . I go out and give these talks, i am a big guy because it was a bestseller, it was so good. Someone stands up at the end. How is nick . We did an appearance in maine and it goes well, it is good having him in the audience because he always asks the editorial, and lift it in nebraska, we have that baby on the trail 24 hours later and nick is in the audience, excuse me, did all the work. He is back at work in construction projects. Adolescent turning in, just happy, i read 100 pioneer journals, and a really great book, paid 1 60 for a bibliography, it was also done by merrill madison, obsessed on it all, i got to places like the year we crossed 2011 was a high water year, and a traditional water crossing, willow creek, 30 acre swamp, it is on the other side, i knew there was a seminal cutoff in the same area, it was more heavily traveled, i took some compass bearings so all the research paid out, going to museums, primary sources as much as i could, tons of other history books, if i got to a footnote, i go to the footnote and try to get the original source. Believe it or not, 80,000 words longer than what got published, just a possessed with this stuff. The pioneer journal, there must have been a time coming west off of the high plane short grass theory. And see the rockies. What was your comment when you experienced the same thing . My comment was not printable. You are looking at the rockies. The point where they came off of the prairie and first looked upon the rockies, in nebraska, scotts bluff from mitchell pass, it is so difficult to remember, everything you researched, when she got to the top of missile plasse, what she was looking at was the top of mount laramie, 9000 feet, the purple dome of laramie filled our horizon. 20 pages later we get there. The book is that sort of thing of tenses. The real thing that was said was nick was in the wagon, jesus, we got to cross that. The purple dome of laramie, 90 miles away, you could see it. It was out on the other side of weekland. That is when you first saw the rockies. The thing about the trail i explain in the book is circuit around the big peaks, except this one awful place on the wyoming idaho line. Scotts bluff, stand on the bluff on highway 52, at laramie point. The discipline of father arthur, during this it did. This fellow graduated from the same school. Tony with our track coach at a catholic school, but was the most profane man in the state of new jersey. I wont use the actual words but he says jesus, you are running like an egyptian today if you remember, i was a good mile or. I would be coming in. I know i am going to win but i am still behind. I learned endurance. That was the big thing about the trip. My brother and i were proud of it, we dont know people who would do this. We would be 18 hours some days, it was the ability i learned one important thing early, i got tired on the wagon, it is dangerous in a covered wagon because you fall into the wheel. Every day i knew i would get off the wagon and would walk five or six miles, i needed to do that to get myself back up and the rockies were fascinating because it was 42 days above 7000 feet and my feeling because you were in the high plains out there and all the way to 8000 feet to get over the rockies, you never get altitude sickness or anything like that until you get to 12 or 14. You are not required to put oxygen on until 10,000. I thought i was fine and i wasnt. I suffered severe, not altitude sickness but hypoxia, deprivation. Started leaving buckets of change which caused problems. We would get to a spot over rocky ridge and they said do not cross rocky ridge, they go to seminole cut off. Do not take rocky ridge. The federal government doesnt want you out there. When you get to the mormon camp, it was saturday. All the mormons went to church, there was no mormon camp so i kept going straight, you do know, dont you, you are heading straight for rocky ridge. You cant turn a covered wagon around listen to me. We got there, share escalator, stationary escalator of rock going up 300 feet. What are they talking about . We went right over that baby, it was no big deal. The oxygen deprivation, the wheels are broken, we dont have any water. We will be good. I had that oxygen deprivation where there are two forms, when you get more rows and the other you get euphoric. We will make it somehow. Anyone else . We are pretty much done. You spoke about your brother nick. I am supposed to ask a question about him. What is the most creative sticks . He admitted to fixing things. The most creative fix, the most creative thing was he called my mother, my 90yearold mother in maine. Nick was very critical, get them pressed and everything, he goes i think i am crossing the oregon trail with 3 mules, jack russell terrier and a closed horse. He made all kinds of creative fix es, he built this thing on the back of the truck to carry numb 100 gallons of water. We bought imitation leather harness and it is considered better, it is very durable, we didnt to harness repairs in the middle of the planes. One of the things i learned on the trip, but at certain critical junctures, this imitation nylon reinforced plastic would rub against the mules and they would get bad sores and leather wont do that as much because it is leather to leather. I coming into camp after carrying water and nick is going through my backpack and taking things out. Thanks for bringing these, he rebuilt the bridles and other parts of the harness out of my belt and it worked. Made them a little on the large side and when they were rubbing against the mules there was no source. There were a dozen things like that. It was like an old western always complaining about something. Every hundred miles, jack up the wagon and pull the wheels off of their heavy, regrease, put them back on and we would get somewhere and nick would say every week since we have been gone, havent had any help from my brother. I would go over the wagon and say nick, let me help you grease the wheels. Trying to do all the work yourself. Get your College Educated ass away from my wagon these beautiful personality contradictions about him, i dont have any myself. He was absolutely instrumental because he could fix anything. Thank you very much, this has been great. [applause] rinker buck is going to be out to sign books. Please let him exit and we look forward to seeing you at the Trustees Theater tomorrow at 3 00 to see paul william young. [inaudible conversations] you are watching booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Here is a look at prime time tonight. We kick off the evening at 6 30 eastern. That all happens tonight on cspan2s booktv. Retired army colonel patrick murray, why did you write a book . I quit 25 years in the army and ran for congress, my proverbial look behind the curtain and it scared me straight with the state of our political system. When you look at polls, three court is of americans are unhappy with the direction the country is going with government. As a constitutional conservative i count myself as one of those and that comes from the fact that our founders set up a system where the individual has a starring role and government plays a supporting role. It flipped on its head and led me to the title of the book, government is the problem, because i believe our government has gotten too big and both political parties, career politicians on both sides of the aisle facilitate that. You are seeing that play out right now in the republican primary and the fact that so much of the conservative base is rallying around someone with no political experience, completely outside the republican establishment. I think it is a very good thing. The Republican Party needs to have this crucible to go through because we already have one party of big government, the democrat party, like it or not, that is what they espouse. The Republican Party ostensibly is supposed to be the party that is intellectual descendents of our founding fathers, they should be channeling milton friedman, standing for limited government, but they dont. You go back to the two terms of president george w. Bush with republicancontrolled senate, republicancontrolled house, doubled the federal debt, slathered on government regulations, created a new entitlement, created a new government agency, they are not governing as conservatives. That is what has led to the situation now. Host people talk about a constitutional conservative. What does that mean . What is a reallife example . Guest i am a reallife example. I stopped calling myself a republican even though i am a conservative. I am a constitutional conservative. It is very simple. I believe our constitution is something along the lines of the Owners Manual for the nation and you need to adhere to it. When i swore an oath as an army officer to the poor the constitution there is no statute of limitations on that. Our politicians do the same thing. To me, being a constitutional conservative means adhering to that, that means limited government, individual liberty, especially the 10th amendment. We have gotten away from that on both sides of the isle because career politicians have broken the code that the bigger, more powerful, more extensive the federal government is, the better it is for their incumbency. They are supporting and defending their own incumbency as opposed to the constitution. Host you refer to your book government is the problem as an after action report on the 2012 election. I do. Whenever you do any kind of mission or objective in the army you write an after action review. You look at what you did right, what you did not so well, how to improve things. That is what this started as. The more i looked into it the more i realized i dont believe a political cycle, if you are not happy with the direction the country is going i dont think the political cycle fixes that. I dont think electing the next great person fixes that because it is systemic. That is where i came up with solutions. You cant just complain, you have to provide solutions. Mine is in the constitution, article v of the constitution which affords us the ability to call something called the convention of states whereby the states can propose constitutional amendments separate and distinct from congress and the federal government. Host what was the selfpublishing process like . I had never written a book before, i had never run for congress before. I was blessed with wise people who have done those things. When i found a couple editors and found this publishing house, a step above selfpublishing and they were helpful so to edit and refine it, it was terrific to codify your thoughts and get them down in the book. Host retired army colonel patrick murray, here is the book, government is the problem. This is booktv on cspan2. We are at sea pack. When i tune in on the weekends usually it is authors sharing new releases. Watching nonfiction authors on booktv is the best television for serious readers. They can delve into their subjects. Booktv weekends, they bring you out there after author after author, the work of fascinating people. I am a cspan fan. I first met nick adams three years ago. If you understand history think about the lung the young man who came to the United States in the early 1800s. If you