they handed these over to the u.s. forces. they sent to these guys straight to guantanamo. he was there for six or seven years. and to add insult injury, and 2003 the u.s. -- or maybe 2002, the u.s. found the videotape of him being tortured by al qaeda and found his sort of forced confessions. ..

>> they had lingered with ties to the u.s. and the have-nots were those that did not have much power. if you look at today, it is in a lot of places. and it's very important to remember the have and have-nots. they became more entrenched with the war are fighting today and i mentioned that the taliban surrendered and tried to switch around. all of this is happening in washington as it's happening. and even despite this they tried in many cases to stay on the afghan government side and even

the taliban commander in the 1990s. and he surrendered in 2002 and was well-publicized in a ceremony to hand over his weapons and the sub commander told them to hand over the weapons. and they said if i agreed to abstain from political life, okay then i will do this as he you said. and so that is what has happened and then he was arrested and taken to an unidentified location and they beat him and tortured him and that's continued for a week. and he said i don't have anymore weapons. until eventually he was forced to understand this and they

handed it over to the afghan militia but again he was marked as someone who could pay. he was arrested a few months later with the same charade and they raise money and then he fled to pakistan. and there were other taliban members like him. and they were talking about what to do about this. and so was the taliban and the reconstituted itself. so one thing is they had an audience in those communities that did not have access to u.s. military and that is what happen when it grew at first. and so then we had a full-blown insurgency. so they became just as

oppressive as those that had been replaced but by this time you have gunmen and so what ended up happening is you have those that were caught between both sides in either you're living in one area where this site has ties to the afghan government and you're being treated extremely poorly by the taliban were on the other side you are moving in the community and being tortured and executed and he finally squeeze the two sides and that's directly giving away too much of the book and that's how the book ends, looking at this as someone who was a civilian and that is what the character in the book was, a

civilian areas to find an advocate switch was these two forces. between the taliban and taliban and the warlords. people have to take a very different choices and they are very difficult. and that is the reality of the war. but you have people not because they think this is part of the future but because they need protection from those warlords. and there are others that support the same warlords as a way of protecting themselves against malicious taliban. and today when i last counted, there were 250,000 men under arms in afghanistan with the u.s. government is paying for and that includes the afghan government, the police, a whole other array of militia. and a raid against them, nobody knows how many, maybe tens of thousands of taliban being supported by pakistan.

neither side is really strong enough to refute the evidence. people on the left side are better armed, you know, they are not going to be able to go into every village but on the other hand the taliban, even though they have tens of thousands of people, they are not going to be able to go in there to some of the major cities and stop the government. so what you have is to entrenched i that looks like it will continue unfortunately. that is a bleak note that that sort of where the book ends looking at that prospect. the u.s. is going to have this for many years to come and this is the longest war in american history and it could continue to

go on for years and years in the future. thank you. [applause] >> we now have about 15 minutes for questions and i will remind you that we need to end this session around 1055 to allow for the next group to enter. nevertheless untranslated also remind everyone that we have microphones. you can make your way to either one of those microphones if you have any restaurants. >> you can make your way to the microphone if you have any questions. >> members of the american military saw things as you did, are there any end and if there were, why were they unable to change the policy that you described? the policies?

>> think there are two reasons for that. one is that just like me, members probably recognize that it's far too late. but this is a sense that would happen only came afterwards years after and the second reason is the way that the u.s. military is structured. there's a sort of tension between short-term interest and long-term interest. and so people who are serving on the ground in the state department as well, there is an impetus to have short-term gain. the you will be able to clear this area out, building school or something like that. then maybe you get a promotion after that and then you go back home and you have to deal with the consequences, the person systematically uprooted half of the other tried to do it.

and so the long-term picture is something that i think washington is not very good at. and that has been a major problem and it continues to be a problem. >> some of us in this country are confused as to why the former leader hamid karzai seem so bitter about this given the fact that we seem to have supported him over many years. can you explain the basis for that? >> that is a really good question. i think on the one hand he is very hypocritical because he is part of a system and he creates the system that he decries, corruption and warlordism and all of these things and also he wouldn't be there unless they put him into power. on the other hand i think that thereis some that for every

dollar the u.s. spends on the central government outside of the central government on strongmen, what that ended up doing is creating a weak central government. so for example in 2002, we called him the mayor of the city. he was extremely weak. warlords were much stronger and only buy it virtual relationship to the u.s. military. and he had a private militia, thousands of people who rented the land on which the u.s. military built a base. he is extraordinarily wealthy and he's also a malign influence on the province because of the reasons i explained, falsely accusing people. people in the afghan government

recognized that he is a lignin force. but at that point he so powerful and there's nothing that they can do. they eventually remove him to another province into which they could take border customs and border trade. so there is a sense into which he is very bitter that he was left to be an extremely weak president is still expected to succeed. and i think that that is valid. at the same time he also played this same game and so there is a hypocrisy in that. >> how would you describe pakistan and if their intention is to control and rule in

afghanistan, why not let them do so? >> i think that probably speaking pakistan three be interested in afghanistan is the same as the u.s. which is to have a client regime in the country. the difference is what kind of client machine. and i think they want a regime in place which is not from india. and is hardly part of this, but keep in mind that their hundreds of millions of those in the border and in the 60s and 70s nationalism was advocated which is not necessarily the private breakup of it. there are underlying fears and policies in afghanistan.

the question is why not let them do that. and today, we don't want them to rule this. i think coming from a moral sense there are so many other communities that would be excluded from this political process. which is the same problem today, which is why the taliban is strong. there are so many communities that have been excluded from this order and we don't want to reproduce that. and we want to help this country that has been in a war for so long. so for that reason we don't want to disallow pakistan to have that. i think what we really should do is negotiate a settlement between all the various sides and i think it's going to be difficult for this to happen and it gives us something to aspire to. >> at the beginning of your

talk, you said that the taliban, when they were initially defeated, they put down their arms and surrendered and was prepared to declare allegiance to the u.s. and it has kind of become a tradition over the years. are there other cultural traditions in place today that help people navigate this horrible reality that they are faced with? you know, trying to choose sides in this situation. >> i think that it almost becomes a tradition because this is a country that has been in war for 35 years. and so there are many millions of afghans in this and there are

motifs that come out of this. so actually i do think that we have a tendency to switch sides and it's almost like a cultural position in a way. here's someone who worked for the united nations secretly with united nations because the village didn't leave the woman should work. so she secretly had a job with the u.n. helping women, helping to register them to vote. two years later she was also secretly supporting the taliban and you could read about why she did that in the book. so i learned this and it became almost second nature to her. she has four children and she has to do it she had to do to survive. there other institutions which

tout the administration of war, for example with the resolution of tribal council that exists in afghanistan. and this includes what helps to resolve local conflicts. let's say that you and i have a conflict, this is a country that doesn't have official records of land. and we would have access and all of a sudden you realize that this person is a member of the taliban. and i say oh, he is a spy with the u.s. and that is how these things tend to be resolved. but there is a long history of the tribal council and more

effort should be brought into this support. >> i'm confused about the role of the effect of u.s. military. from what i heard you say, when they first came in 2001 after 9/11, that led to them leaving the country. but by their continued presence the activities or whatever happened, that led to them coming back. so i'm wondering what to the people of afghanistan -- what would they want for the u.s. military? to stay or to go, and has the effect of lowering the number of troops there -- has it been better or worse for these

situations? >> it's complicated. afghanistan is a very divided society. the war in afghanistan is being fought in about half the country and to the north it's also violent. but it's about half the country where the war is taking place. in april, figure in this question, back in february and april at the time the question was should the afghan government signed a bilateral security agreement to the u.s. and legalized and extend the u.s. presence. 90% of the people that i spoke to oppose this because the logic was that that is one less side and that is what they do.

on the other hand if you go to the area where there is no war, it is the opposite and people want the u.s. to stay because they need the u.s. to buffer against the war encroaching upon their territory. and people say the government should sign this agreement and in both cases though the logic is what will keep us safe. it wasn't just what afghans should look like at people in the north had tremendous suffering and then the cabo people lived through tremendous suffering as well. people in the south are living through tremendous suffering now and they want to do anything they can to do that stop. and so we really have two different committees and we really don't get that captured.

and we tend to speak to people who are in the cities and if you go down to the south it is a different story. >> this relates to his question. is there a solution, and in an effort to be wise, what is a wise route that the u.s. can take remap. >> i'm reminded of the israeli novelist and talking about this concept. but i think that we talked about the two traditions of tragedy and literature one is a shakespearean tragedy and one is a jacobian tragedy. and in shakespearean tragedy,, at the end of the day everybody is dead.

and at the end of the day everyone hates each other but is still alive. and so we could find a way to have it be a success, what would that take? and i think two things are important. first of all that there has to be a concerted effort to negotiate a settlement with all sides and i think it's an excellent step in the right direction in that regard. and i say that while knowing that there are so many different interests that may be negotiating the settlement will never happen. but can be a really big positive benefit. and so i think that is important and second of all, in the u.s. we need to change our relationship with afghanistan and it is that the afghans

government is unable to raise taxes. and the afghan government comes almost entirely from foreign aid. so in other words they are propping up the afghan government and as if we stop this, we collapsed tomorrow. so these are questions of sustainability and how can we get the afghan government and the society to have his independent economy so that one day we can sort of disengage. unfortunately, this goes back to the short-term and long-term thinking that i was referring to before, unfortunately the question of sustainability has not really come up at all. so for all that the committee is spending to build this judiciary, the parliament, to those capacities worldwide, money is also going to warlords and strongmen.

the u.s. taxpayer dollars are still going to warlords and strongmen around the country. and that is because it assures the continued weakness of the afghan government. so i think addressing that would be the other aspect that the u.s. should do. >> last question. >> you spoke about growing your beard out and getting a motorcycle and actually meeting with the taliban warlord. he speak a little bit about that? were you ever afraid for your life? >> it's a little bit of an interesting situation with a command and control structure. so what i actually did was i got permission from the leadership to go do it and so if you just drive into that you're probably

going to end up in that. so what i had done is connected to the leadership and it was very fortuitous because people in the main prison, i used to sneak into the prison posing as a relative of prisoners and i would sneak in there once a week with the al qaeda bigwigs in there. so for months and months i would hang out and talk with them to the point where they would be able to connect me to people in the field. so i spent a month living with them in the field. and today that is probably impossible. a lot of people that i met are all dead now. most of them have been killed in

strikes and drones and other things. it contributes to the fragmentation and i showed up with a letter from some taliban leaders, saying that i'm a journalist and not a spy. they would probably still kidnap me today. >> thank you to all of guest here today and all of you in the audience today. [applause] >> i will remind you that anand gopal will be signing books if you would like to continue the conversation. and also we have more information up here. thank you so much. >> coming up next on the southern festival of books, we have charles blow discussing his memoir, "fire shut up in my bones." this is about one hour.

>> okay, i think that we are going to go ahead and get started. i just want to welcome everyone to the session with charles. before we get started, a quick reminder to remind everyone that the books being presented here are for sale and a portion of the proceeds go to the festival and you can also make donations to keep this party going. that is how you show your love. so okay. most of you know charles from his regular column at "the new york times." he writes about a wide range of social and political issues. he spent almost 2008. he was the art director for national geographic magazine.

with us today to discuss his memoir, "fire shut up in my bones." and it's a very rich story about his childhood in louisiana and his youth. the focus of the book is on an episode of sexual abuse, and two episodes that have been in his childhood and the repercussions of that on his own struggle as he comes to terms with that. so please welcome charles blow that and what we are going to do is have a little conversation and he will read some passages from the book. we will open up the book are questions for sure. we will remind you that we are going to break up a few minutes before we're we are out of time and charles blow will sign books. okay. so as i said the focus of this book is your experience as

sexual abuse happened to you as a child. and the way that that happened and you had all that trauma to deal with. but it is a very rich story about a real louisiana childhood and a young man at the university. and so i wanted to kind of give everyone the context for understanding the episode of what happened to you. so i'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about louisiana where you grew up. >> okay. first, thank you for coming, there's so much competition with really great authors at this time. and so thank you for being here and in my little town, probably

when i was born we probably had about a thousand people and now it is worth louisiana in the middle of the state along interstate 20. it is segregated and it still is to some degree and most of the white population lives on either side of main street, which is actually on the eastern side of town and i guess we lived on the black history because we were on the last street. and so everything was a part of this and they were finally forced integrate schools.

but as were the large communities, academy's popped up and they were basically places where white people would not have to be in school. so all of this resulted in many of the kids being black. so when i was younger were about five black kids at her school. and so i didn't even -- i didn't know there were more kids in town because we never saw them. and part of that is because the academy is so far away that it takes a long time to get there. you have to leave early in the morning to get there.

if they got back into town they would have to wait. so you literally never saw these kids. so i didn't think that they existed. >> did you feel pretty insulated from racism? >> i think that racism was an ambient presence. the fact that you are a segregated community was very apparent. and the way they describe it, there are actually two cemeteries and there's a chain-link fence between them. so that none of these dead people get the wrong idea and cross line. but the way they describe it, two cemeteries with two cemetery associations, as far as i can figure out that's basically where they cut the grass. but that is how you can justify

it and say, okay it's not a problem, we just have different people that cut the grass. and so it is there. but in a way you are right, i am insulated from overt racial warfare as it plays out for many people in america. one individual was asking about why we talk more about this and part of it was because there was a period of about two or three years where i went to an integrated school which was a horrible experience for me. and after that i came back to this predominantly african-american school and it's a school that has an incredibly long set of histories and roots.

it started as the first black college called coleman college and it was founded to educate sons and daughters of free slaves. so you have his professors at these college and this is what i grew up seeing. it is a juxtaposition of black poverty to wipe affluence and i saw sophistication and they taught latin and that was kind of the heritage that i inherited. so those teachers never let you forget that you're part of this tradition. and so my -- every room that i was in, there was a black person within that room. this idea never even occurred to me until i was older and i had

to be in a more integrated environment. the by that time i always doomed at even if you weren't, you could be. and so i ended up going through a black college was close to my house, it was just like 20 miles down the street and it was the same kind of experience. so you didn't have these struggles were you run for student body president and you don't win anything, within vote for you because you're black. no, we didn't vote for you because we don't like you and that is the only explanation there was. and so i didn't have those experiences. so i came out of that with none of those psychological wounds. >> your mother reinforced that because your mother went back to school and became a

schoolteacher. >> yes, she did. and now she was elected to the school board and she called me today and said, she waited until it was over and she said she was ecstatic about this. she was elected to the school board. she was so excited. but there was discrimination for her to be a professional. you have to understand that this is a really small town and i once read that column about teaching and i wanted to ask my mom why she became a teacher. and i thought she would say that i just love kids and i love teaching and she was a great teacher. i remember kids used to call her mom, which used to irritate me

to no end. it was like, this is my mom, not your mom. [laughter] that was not her response. her response was when i was a girl, there were only two things that a girl could be. a receptionist or a housekeeper. and she said there were not a lot of people hiring little black girls and i refuse to work in anybody's kitchen. and so the only option that she could see to become a professional and not have to be subjected to either one of those is that she could become a teacher. and i think that that is really important to bring up this kind of idea that society had basically given up generations of the most brilliant and innovative teachers i have ever

had because they did not have as many options as men. if you were brilliant at physics or mathematics and you were a woman of that generation, you didn't become a scientist because those wars were not necessarily open to you. you became a math teacher. so you have these brilliant minds in classrooms and, you know, in a way we have to do, and this is diverse and a little bit, but we have to get back to point we are not forcing people into professions because they have no other options but because we attract billion minds to that profession again. >> and your mother came to that not by an easy route. getting back to the issue of challenges. let's talk about the situation in your home and your mom was

under the most difficult of circumstances. can you talk a little bit about that? >> well, first -- i can't quite figure out the exact reasoning, maybe it was the combination and she stopped. but she left college to help take care of family and she also had a very young family and she got married very young to my father. she had five boys five of a a stretch over eight years. and every time she got pregnant she got dreadfully ill. and this is a time when there wasn't, you know, not everyone had health insurance and there was no obamacare. you do the best you could and maybe you checked into a hospital or maybe you didn't. and prenatal care was not the same as what it is now. so my grandmother just said, my

little brother came nine months later and my mother just could not, you know get out of bed and my grandmother said let me have one of the babies because you cannot do it. and so when i was born, same thing happened in my grandma said, let me here for one of the kids. so i state my preference for the first three years of my life until my mom was able to be back on her feet and take care of all these kids. but when she became able, she worked incredibly hard. she worked at a chicken processing plant. that was when someone helped her to get a job. and my father was working as a construction worker, but he wasn't the nicest man and the

car was parked in the yard and she didn't have keys. so she would have to bum a ride to the next town to work at a chicken processing plant. and she finally got a car from the local high school, a beat down on that they used for drivers ed and they sold it for a small amount of money and that was her first car. and she began to take classes to finish her college degree. for these entire times that i could ever remember, she was working during the day, sometimes more than one job and then going to school at night. for better circumstances. >> and that led to parting with your dad? >> i think that was part of it. there was an exhaustion with the relationship and also she was to

a point where she had options and that she felt like she could make it on her own but all of these kids. >> and your cancellation chip was, was a turbulent? would you say? >> yes, of course. and they, you know, they thought. i remember one time, and my mom is a tough cookie. and i think that there was one fight and one to many and she was out of there. truly after that fight we packed up. >> and that was, after that you were desperately poor? >> that's right, we were already poor and we moved further along that section even though she

started as a teacher's aide. the teaching just wasn't paying very well in the early 70s. and, you know. her with all these kids alone, she was also taking care of my great uncle and it was very difficult. >> there's an episode that you talk about in the book. >> i can read that. >> that happened before the episode when you were sexually abused. i'm wondering as a little boy or not kind of a family, were you frightened by the violence? or did you think this is how things are meant. >> it is frightening and you lose self-confidence. and, i mean, you don't know what else the world is and her family kind of becomes your world.

school is the second part of that world. but yes, it did feel very treacherous and a bit more than i could process and possibly deal with. >> so this was the context in which you are about seven or so of her older cousin came to stay for the summer? >> yes, a couple weeks in the summer. >> you are living with your mom and brothers and great uncle. >> that's right. >> so how old is he? >> he's not as old as my oldest brother who is eight years older than me. i don't know the exact days. i always assumed he was six or seven years older. a young teenager. >> if you could just talk about what happened? >> okay. we moved from the first neighborhood, which was kind of idyllic in my mind is a really

small child. and i'm not only in the first neighborhood but street, and the world is a couple houses down. but i am not only the youngest boy in my family but the youngest boy in the entire neighborhood. so i'm not not just my mother's baby but everyone's baby. so they called me charles baby, that is my 9% nickname. and the older ladies still to this day will calm your. [laughter] and so i didn't go to preschool. i spent my days with my great uncle and we would just go house to house to all the elderly people in the neighborhood and it felt like this incredible village and every time someone

would make some cookies or cake, they'd send me over and it stuck me full of sugar and then sending back on wired. and it was just lovely to me. and so then when we left the neighborhood and moved out of the house that my mom and i were together act, we only moved -- probably about four city blocks before little kids come you can't go anywhere by yourself. so it was if i had moved to canada. and i was no longer charles, no one invited me into the house have cookies and cake. i was plopped down by myself and my mom was already working hard and going to school. and now everything was on her shoulders and she was working even harder. and so she -- she's trying to

pay attention to all that and she would say, have your back, get into bed, she is exhausted and she can't even see that i have been more lonely than i had ever been. and my brother is, they are not even old enough to understand. it's harder on older children's and younger one and they are trying to find their way in the world. and so i become incredibly lonely and i'm already a relatively quiet kid. so jester comes one summer in the middle of this enveloping loneliness and he makes clear that he wants to hang out with me and play with me and then as a child you think oh, one of the big kids want to play with me. so you think, okay. and we played and we laughed and

talked and i shared a room with my oldest brother and he says, you guys are just constantly rambling. you can have my spot in the venue guys can talk all night. so that is what we did. one of those nights i woke up in the middle of the -- and abusive episode. in the middle of an abusive episode and it was incredibly dramatic and fusing thing because you are a pre-sexual being. you don't even know how to comprehend what is happening and it's like, what did i do to make this happen and that i somehow invite this? how do i respond in what ways they to make it not happen? how do i stop it two none of that for a 7-year-old was clear and more did the words come. >> after this happened, he sort

of believe you meant. >> absolutely. the next day he said let's do that again and i said no, i don't want to. and finally the simple words came and they are simple words, but he wasn't pleased and i think that -- he never spoke a kind word to me ever again. and he became a bully and a homophobic taunting, which as an adult i believe was designed to keep me from ever telling and shift the burden of responsibility from him to me as something by your very nature you have invited me to do this and i would not have otherwise done it, it is you that is strange and different. an outcast and so also to inking

my credibility if i ever said anything. and so being a kid that is not quite sophisticated enough to understand things, it worked and i never told anyone until i was an adult. >> did you feel some responsibility for what has happened? >> i think the kid in me wondered if maybe there was something about me that had changed something in him and had made this this way. >> yes, because the disparity described in the aftermath, wondering if you can think back to your 7-year-old mind. where do you feel it bathysphere came from? you obviously didn't fully understand the nature, or did you?

>> i didn't understand the abuse, but i also believe that i probably could have rebounded from the abuse and it wasn't penetrative or anything like that. i've read cases of abuse that i am horrified by. and i know that that was not the level of mine. but the abuse is not -- abuse is not really about specific calorie but the emotional and trail and a psychic violence and so in that way there is not that much differentiation. i do believe because it was an ongoing and it didn't continue that i thought that i could have dealt with that. but what i could not deal with is the bullying. you know, the abuse that happened in one little time -- but the bullying happened all the time.

it was inescapable and i could not find sanctuary. it was in the daytime. -- that completely ate way to my confidence in my ability to sort of process, and the trauma to me seemed like it was never going to end. and i think that that -- as a society we have to understand that that is what bullying feels like two kids. it's not episodic or one moment in time. it feels like you are being suffocated. >> he must've felt like an outcast. >> durability to trust people who want to befriend you is

forever damaged. every time someone says oh, hey, let's hang out, your mind goes what is this about. and you have to learn to pick up on the kind of residue of of the intent in people. and you're doing that as a child and a child is not equipped to do that. but that is where your mind is out. are they are alter your motives to this? >> as you talk about it, the thought is echoed, or it did echo some of your fathers behavior towards you. >> there was some, but i never felt mallas with what my father

did. the crime and the cruelty of it was a remarkable ability to not really care. and that he never meant to hurt because he didn't know how to love. and so i never thought of him with any sort of anger and i've never seen him angry in my entire life, even when they fought, he was trying to not get hurt. she was irate. and so i never thought of him the way that i thought of this in the past. >> you just had nowhere to take your feelings. >> that's right. and the one person that i always thought would have understood

the most was my grandmother's fourth husband that i have grown up with. but my grandmother did not like the single life and though she kept the man. but the last one was truly the most angelic human being that i had ever encountered and it wasn't even something that she was doing the kind of a spiritual thing that he brought into the room that call in every room. and i write in the book that he was like the river always running, always wanting to be somewhere like it was and exactly where was always meant to be. and he was to meet what the ocean once. and i thought it was so sad that

he died early because of lung cancer and that was the one man who i could actually talk to and say, what just happened. and then he was gone. >> i think that i will describe this up with only one paragraph. jed was a change smoker with a strong last and strong eyes and it was the eyes that struck you. brown, maple syrup sweet and a hint of gray around the edges. and sunrise yellow where the light should be. deep enough to get lost in, bottomless like martin's pond.

like the beginning of a good priority and have a laugh. they were the kind of eyes that drew up the light and the kind that melted worries in the warm stove. the kind that for dave before discard the throat on the way out. it would take a man with eyes like that to move to the middle of nowhere and ate outside. and then this is the part where this is quoting from -- the only woman of her past of her and demand that i didn't recognize. both sharpe sitting on a bench in front of a painted backdrop. he was sitting there tall and strong and she was laughing with her legs crossed and her head resting delicately on his shoulder. and there was a power in his

pose, but there was more in hers. a feminine power in the kind that light the room and buckles the knee. the kind that makes men do things that they know that they shouldn't. sneak in through open windows and lida loved ones, give more than they had. i had often stared at that picture trying to connect that woman, dangerously learn what the one that i knew now is that mama. i couldn't do it. she was different now and he had made her different because he was more powerful than she was. he threw his power from a different source. not from hollowness but from wholeness. it was a grand thing they came from knowing and accepting and loving the self that made the

knowing and accepting and loving of everything else possible. it didn't crush but accommodated. he hadn't taken away her power but had given her a peaceful place to transform it into calm down and to move out of the woman that she had been into the woman that she could be. she was like a river always running, never still, wanting to be somewhere other than where was the has finally reached the ocean vast and deep and exactly where it was always meant to be. [applause] >> the book is filled with passages like that. but all of that was a memory and a few years after, it was a long

time after the episode with chester where you were and you are very sad child and had no place to take it and consider killing yourself. >> just that people don't think of an eight year old or a nine-year old not having anyone to talk to. and then the great uncle that lived with you but you live with, there was an episode with him that was very similar amax. >> exactly. exactly. i would just kind of hang out in his room when i was a little boy and it just felt comfortable that he would just tell stories and clean out one pipe and smoke another pipe and tell me these great stories about what it was like when he was a little boy. and i was enraptured by this. and sometimes i would roll over

and go to sleep in the bed and i thought this was the safest place for me to be in the world. and then i woke to an episode of what felt like it was about to be another abusive episode. and as i write in the book and exactly what that was because the flesh remembers things. and so before anything could happen i'd got up out of bed and walked out of the room and i never went back into the room again. and as i say, where is my cousins abuse had broken my spirit, this broke my heart. and it reinforced the idea that there must be something about

me. >> was this like a whole constellation of emotional balance? not being able to struggles to anyone? and also there were some real questions about your sexuality as you got older. in one incident happened when you were 10. >> right. >> and it seemed like -- it seemed like this was sort of constantly in the background for you amax. >> yes. well, boys and puberty, it's constantly in the background anyway. but yes, i'm realizing very early on that something is

happening that i don't have the language were. which is that in addition to being attracted to girls i seem to be attracted to some boys and men. but it is not related people talk about is an actual human being. .. >> the images in my head were

never bodies, they were faces. and they were smiling people who seemed nice. so it wasn't even -- i didn't know how to, what category to put that in because it's not like i'm fantasizing about sexual intimacy, i'm just imagining people who are kind and not interested in hurting me. >> and as the years went on and you entered adulthood, you dead, essentially -- you did, essentially, bisexual is a term that you apply to yourself. >> yes, it is. >> it seems like during those years that process of finding that out about yourself was kind of mixed up with this other piece in your life where there was something lacking, which was a father figure. >> well, i think, you know, what happens, how a kid processes something and adults, the kind of clinical psychiatrists will approach it are different. i think you have to allow those spaces and allow a level of understanding.

if a -- children who are victims of childhood sexual abuse, particularly if the abuse is kind of same-gendered, they will often braid together the ideas of identity, abuse and attraction. because it's your first introduction to anything. but, but you're kind of with maturation and understanding, you get to a point where you can unbraid those things and realize that who, you know, identity or attraction is probably either you're predisposed or predetermined to like what you going to like anyway. that's why the abuse, even though it was same-gendered, could not erase or suppress my heterosexual impulses because i was probably predisposed to have those anyway. i could not turn down a, you

know, if a girl made an advance at me, i was -- i melted, you know, like that sort of thing. i couldn't turn it down. you can't -- the abuser and the abuse do not have that level of power over you, and you, as an adult, you can separate those things. same is true of fact that i probably would have been somewhere along the spectrum in the middle and that, and fluid in some, to some degree meaning that depending on circumstances and individual people could feel attraction to people of the same gender. it may not be equal and never has felt equal to me, but it is there. and so both coming to understand that these episodes of abuse did not dictate identity and also coming to learn that the

spectrum and fluidity were, in fact, real parts of the human experience and in in no way abnormal, it's just different may not be the majority of people, but it's just a difference. and understanding that there is a language to describe this was very helpful, instructive for me in coming to kind of learn to love and live with myself. >> right. but you were still struggling with all that when you went off to college. >> yes. it was still present, yes. >> right. but i wonder if you could talk a little bit about your college years and, specifically, you know, you became president of your from they werety, you went -- fraternity, you went through a really brutal hazing process in the fraternity which you talk about in much detail in the book. >> too much. >> yeah. i knew hazing could be rough,

but it's very rough. but it seemed like not even so much, you know, the issue of questioning your sexuality had by that time become an issue, but you still very much had this need to bond with other men? >> well, i think that's part of the kind of nature of masculinity in general. >> right. >> and in as broad a sense -- in its broadest sense, the book is really about an exploration of what it means to be a man and how broad, how narrowly and dangerously narrowly we draw the concept of what it means to be a man in the collective, of our collective consciousness. but, in fact, how incredibly broad it is. and i have the good fortune of having all of these different sorts of men in my life, and i can bring them to life in this book. you know, people -- i think we

think of masculinity as some kind of ridiculous peak, and everybody's trying to scramble up the hill to get to the peak, and i think of it as an ocean, incredibly broad and wide and encompass a lot of different ways and kinds of being. but i think this struggle is constantly trying to hit the ideal which, you know, i describe as being like the note in a song that's written too high so only a few people are ever meant to hit it, and no one's meant to hold it. and so every time the boys fail to man up, they feel like a failure because no one can hold that. and it robs you of a basic sense of humanity, because as a human being you are fragile, and sometimes you do fail. and sometimes you may cry.

and none of that reduces you. in fact, it reinforces the fact that a you are a human being. and when we allow boys to just be human beings, they will emerge from that better men. and during the fraternity episode, i mean, i'm kind of doing this pendulum swing. i'm swinging from one extreme to another extreme, and i think the from alternative hazing part -- fraternal hazing part is another extreme, and i have to just constantly catch myself when i'm at an extreme and say, you know, this is not me, this is not who i want to be, this is how i i bring myself back to a middle, a truer place of what i believe is right. >> well, and you reached a real crisis point during those years when you were both sort of figuring out the model of masculinity that the fraternity presented was not one you wanted and, also, you came to a real

turning point in your sort of tortured emotional relationship with what had happened to you years before. do you want to talk about the night that you -- >> oh -- >> [inaudible] >> oh, so that's -- okay. so the book opens with that, and it returns to this at the end. but, so the semester before, somehow the cia had become interested in me being an intern. i don't know how this happened. they came to campus every year, and this year i must have interviewed with them, i don't know how it happened, so they were very interested. it got very serious. so the last round of interviews they bring you to virginia, then they do, like, batteries of physical tests and psychological evaluations x part of that is a lie detector test. and, you know, i'm breezing through this thing. there's no way i'm not getting

this internship. and i get hooked up to the lie detector machine, and i'm not thinking anything of it because i'm like, i'm not going to lie. one is have you ever used drugs, which i had never used drugs. when i was in high school, my two best friends and i shared a locker and because it was the locker during lunch, the class before lunch, it was closest to the lunchroom. so we would just throw our bags and things in the same locker so we could get to the lunchroom first. well, they also threw a lot of weed in that locker. so, you know, i didn't judge it, i said, you know, that's your thing, it's not my thing, and they were okay with it not being my thing, i was just like, you know, whatever. do what are you want to do. i was playing basketball, i didn't want to mess up my performance. so i was guilty about that, i felt guilty about that. and secondly, in the fraternity days there would be sometimes you were in a room and, like, everybody is smoking.

i mean, you can barely see your hand in front of your face. [laughter] and every time i was in one of these rooms i was thinking, oh, my god, i know i'm getting a contact high -- [laughter] i know that i'm high right now. and so when he asked that question, those two things immediately popped into my head, and the machine goes -- [laughter] i'm like, oh, my god, i'm failing this test. so even before i could recover from that, he asked a second question which was have you ever had sex with a man which i had not, but there was the instance of childhood sexual abuse. how do you describe that? like, is that -- he wasn't a man at the time, he was a kid. it wasn't, you know, kind of, it wasn't penetrative, so is that sex? it wasn't consensual, so how -- what do i say to this question? but you can't turn around and

say how do i answer this question? [laughter] so i'm, like, panicking, and i hear the machine start to scratch even before i say anything, and i say no because of my check item list i -- checklist i did in my head, no has to be the right answer. i turn around him and say, okay, all the things i'd never told to anyone i start to tell to this guy. and i beg him to let me take this test again. and he is, you know, he seemed -- this is what he does for a living, he's not interested in what i'm saying at all. but he does agree to let me take the test again, and when we get to the same question, i now say yes instead of no, and the machine still says that i'm lying. and i think to myself, oh my god, there is no answer to the question. and i have wanted to be a politician. now, you know, i can never be a a politician because the government thinks i'm a liar.

now, fast forward, i know that they all lie -- [laughter] but back then i thought you had to be an honest man to be a politician. [laughter] so i thought, i can't do it. so thousand i go back -- now i go back and think what i want to do in my entire life, my career has now been ruined once again. and i am in the throes of a real depressive episode. and one night my mom calls my apartment -- i'm sorry, i can't believe that's happening. [laughter] and she says, someone wants to speak to you. and i had no idea who she's talking about, and he gets on the phone says something like, hey, boy, how's it going? and i immediately, i haven't heard this voice in years, and i immediately recognize it's him, and everything explodes in my mind but because i'm thinking yu

have destroyed my life twice. and, you know, i just bolt out of the house. i have a t-shirt -- i have no shoes on, i have pajama pants, i run to the car -- i grab the gun from underneath the seat which my mom had given me to take to school with me just in case, and i'm like just in case, what? i get a c? [laughter] just in case. everybody has guns. and i get it and i slam it onto the car seat, and i'm racing down the interstate. and my plan is very simple, i'm just going to walk into the house and kill him. i'm not arguing, i'm tired of talking, just dead. and i get to the exit which is where you would exit to go to my college, and i just -- tears are streaming down my face. i just say, you know, you have to make a choice here.

you can do this, and it will -- your life will be over, or you cannot, and you can understand that you do not have to live the rest of your life through the eyes of a 7-year-old child. that what he did was a bad thing, but he does not deserve to die for it, and you deserve to live in spite of it. and i turned off the interstate, and i went back home. i called a friend, and i said, girl, i just got on the phone and i said, you know what? just start talking. i don't care what you say, just start talking. [laughter] and she talked for hours. i don't know what she was saying, but it was -- i needed someone to just fill the space. and i had to get off and just think about, you know, how am i to consider myself and how do i

rebound. and part of it was you have the power to simply release it. it is not, you do not have to carry it. i know that some people who are victims of child sexual abuse, they actually need confrontation. they need to sit across a table, and i need you to acknowledge that you have hurt me, and i need to hear your voice, i need to hear you apologize for it. that's not what i needed. i needed to release it. and walk away from it. and that was a choice that i made. >> absolutely, i was just going to say, do they need a mic back there? does it matter? no? >> first of all, i want to compliment you for your work. >> thank you. >> at the times. i've read you a long time, and i

really appreciate your thoughtfulness, and i appreciate the fact that you don't run away from some issues that are very important in our country. you could do that very easily. i'm sure you get letters that say how dare you respond this way. we can't. we cannot thank you enough for taking that position -- is thank you. >> i want you to know that. >> thank you. [applause] >> my question deals with the issue of forgiveness, and you just touched on it. could you comment -- and you said, you referred to it in your column last sunday and in the book. can you comment on how you came to forgive and, in fact, have you come to the point of forgiving? >> right. and i think, you know, it kind of depends on how we're defining forgiveness. the way i'm using it is that is to release, is as a release. it's not to erase which is what i think some people think of it

as erasing what has happened, but it's to release . i firmly believe that love and hate are such enormous and expensive emotions that they cannot exist in the same body. i had to release my hatred of him in order for me to love myself. and as long as i held onto the idea that i hated him for what he had done, i could not fully love myself. and that is, that is the kind of forgiveness -- it doesn't absolve. it simply releases. >> probably best, yeah, so everybody hears you. >> we're going to get some exercise in here today. [laughter] >> this book changed my life. thank you.

>> thank you for saying that. >> so much. very similar stories, very similar experiences, and i happened on it over a podcast. and i actually listened to it before i read it, which you read -- >> yes. i am the nary to have of the book -- narrator of the book, by the way. >> it is phenomenal. >> thank you. >> but i want to thank you because i spent years of money in therapy, and just in one book you've changed my life. >> thank you, i appreciate that. >> it and it meant so much. there are none that i know of, african-american males, who have written like this and who have told these beautiful stories of these beautiful people. i grew up in a small community, too, and i'm so mad that you wrote a book about people that i know. [laughter] especially like my aunt o december saw? -- odessa? yeah, i know her.

and i just want to thank you for that, ask you will never know what this means to me. >> thank you. i appreciate that. >> you will never know. my question is, is that, you know, those of us that know the four fraternities as historically black universities, colleges, what kind of pushback have you gotten back from that? >> you know, my friends have me in what we call a cone of silence. i don't want to hear anything negative that's happening, don't tell me, i don't want to know it. so i don't know. and the truth is, i think i don't particularly care because the level of barbaric hazing that we were involved in is indefensible. and any person, particularly grown men which would be my age

is the people who would be responding, people who were there when i was there, we're in our mid 40s, some of these people are 50 years old, if you are condoning that with what should be a level of maturity and wisdom that comes with your 40s and 50s, then that that's a sad statement about you. >> any more questions? sure, go ahead. >> hi. i think there are many people who identify as bisexual or experience their sexuality as fluid who will find your words refreshing, exciting. because for all the progress we've made, a lot of the mainstream language around sexuality is still very boxed. and unshifting. i wonder, do you -- pretty simple question, maybe -- do you

experience your words as being political given that they are still in some ways at the front end of the progress towards a broader and more encompassing understanding of sexuality? >> well, i mean, hopefully i understand the question. i didn't write as an advocate, right? so my -- the impulse is completely literary. nonpolitical. however, that said, identity is political. sex is political. love is political. and so if the people who actually do the work of advocacy can use this as instructive, a manual in some way, all the better. and it's really important to me

for people, from a lot of people who said thank you for giving me the language to describe myself. that is really important because when you look at what the data show us about numbers of both children who say that they have, who describe themselves as fluid or bisexual or have had some sort of same-sex encounter and the number of adults who say that in their adult life they have had some sort of same-sex encounter, that number is almost twice as large -- it's larger than people who identify as gay and lesbian combined. so there are a lot of people who -- and i'm not saying that all of those people are bisexual. i think that the human experience is that people try to find themselves, and you can try things and you say, oh, you know, that really wasn't for me and then move on with your life.

but for some people it is a kind of permanent feature of their life, and that is perfectly okay. and you need to have a language that will help you to describe that, and you need to have models of courage that show you how you can do that and continue to live a life that is productive and makes a mark on the world and that is not simply about intimacy, but it's about the grander, nobler endeavors of making a mark on the world and leaving it a better place than you found it. and if we can give people that language and give people models for the ability to say i can -- whatever is honest to me, i have not only a right to articulate that, i have a moral

responsibility to love myself in that way that i am brave enough to say it. and it does not reduce me in iny way, having said it. >> i'm afraid we have to call time for the next panel to come in. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> signing books for about the next half hour. >> journalist earl swift appeared at this year's southern festival of books to talk about his book, "auto biography." he traces the history of a '57 station wagon and its many owners. this is about 50 minutes. >> i'd like to welcome you to the 2014 southern festival of

books. it's my pleasure to introduce earl swift. his latest book is called "auto biography: a classic car and motorhead and 57 years of the american dream." it's specified on one '57 chevy and the history that came behind that car. mr. swift has been writing for 30+ years, 22 of those years for the virginian pilot. he was a six-time pulitzer prize nominee. since 2012 he's a residential fellow for the virginia foundation of the humanities at the university of virginia at charlottesville, and "auto biography" is his fifth book. >> thank you. please, get ahold of yourselves. and also a reminder, if you have an ego that needs to be brought into check, all you need to do is to become a book author, because, you know, one day you'll pack a room for reasons

that elude you, you'll just wind up with a huge crowd, and the next day you get a rainy saturday morning, and a few intrepid souls turn out. thank you so much for being those few intrepid souls. it's -- i'll try to make this worth your while. this is the story of a single 1957 chevy station wagon that i've traced back through all 14 people who owned it from the day it rolled out of the assembly plant in the baltimore and, actually, beyond that to the fisher body plant in cleveland where it was first welded together into a tough steel box. and in the course of telling the stories of these 14 other wise unconnected people, this odd little fraternity that's all linked to this one car, i attempt to tell the story of postwar america. it's kind of a fable of all of us really because the automobile's the one thing more than any other possession that

we collectively have that binds us as a country. i mean, we have a relationship with cars that's unlike any, anything else. we don't give our coffee makers nicknames, generally speaking. so what i'm going to do is i'm going to read from the first chapter of "auto biography," and hope that it provokes in you questions that you will ask me. maybe we can get a little bit of a discussion going on the back end of this. it'll take about 20 minutes to read the section that i'm going to read. i will tell you that in its original form this is a, this is a chapter filled with what my dad would call rough language, and so much so that i, in deference to the, anyone who might be watching on tv with small kids in the room, i'm going to replace some of the, some of the roughest of that language with euphemisms or, you know, f-ing, for instance, is not the way the people many this

chapter really -- in this chapter really speak. and i'm going to cut one paragraph altogether that's just so rowdy there's no way i can fix it to make it palatable for general consumption. so bear that in mind. when i say "jerk," another and far more colorful world is probably actually being deployed in the original version. 6-1, 240, biceps big as most men's legs. thick neck. goatee. hair trimmed tight on the sides into a brim-like inch on top. big, calloused mitts roughened by wrench turning and several hundred applications of blunt force trauma of which dozens resulted in his arrest. self-applied tattoo on his left

wrist signifying his years as guest of the state. a belly nourished by beer, whiskey, rumple minitz and buckets of both haut cuisine and buffalo wings. but he leads with his chest, shoulders thrown rearward daring the world to take a swing at him. a few scars considering. under the his right arm is the ghost of a surgery he endured without anesthesia. he snuck out of the hospital for a beer at a nearby strip club, got into a fight and reopened the incision in such a manner that he drenched himself, the club and a neighboring 7/eleven in blood. point of information, he owned the strip club. two breaks in the bones of his nose. and here and there faded nicks were calling a melee outside of a virginia sailor bar.

then made good on the threat by clamping his beefty hands around the charging animal's neck, squeezing until it passed out and beating the adopt with his own -- cop with his own german shepherd. he can be inperson rate with the language. that's the paragraph we'll skip. i've heard many labels applied to him; crazy, brash, a rough customer, funny, charming, shrewd. the case could be made for any and all of them to which i'd add a scholar. his expertise is such that people come hundreds of miles to tap it. he is a historian, a curator of memories, a student of america's popular culture in the mid 20th century, though admittedly that is not the first thing most people notice about him. a friday in september, 2010, in north carolina, a roadside burg

that hugs the virginia line. tattoo parlors, discount cigarette joints, prefab warehouses and hard to miss ernie's place crowded with roughly 400 all cars. most aren't much to look at. a few restored classics which occupy the front half of an oversized quonset hut. corvette stingrays, a couple chevy coups from the mid '30s, but the real trade is in project cars, beaters, some little more than rust brown skeletons sought by motorheads looking to stay busy for a few hundred weekends. this particular afternoon finds ernie in the showroom office eating lunch with members of his regular crew. he's known skinhead for most of his adult life. he hired victoria, aka slick, as ans exotic dancer when she was 20. now 38, she manages all of his business affairs. paul lives next door to him in a

moth of suburban houses the boss owns. the ernie compound, its occupant toes call it. what hyannis port might look like. lunch is muted, they've spent the last month trying to whip the shop into compliance with the closest thing to government in this part of carolina. the county people are displeased that among the first things the southbound traveler sees on crossing into the state is a chaos of derelict cars, some stacked three high. they're unhappy that ernie displays his wares less than 20 feet from state route 68 in violation of county ordnance. it's their view that the place could use some landscaping, ornamental shrubs and trees or a berm to soften the impact. it isn't a car lot so much as a junk yard. that annoys ernie a great deal.

not as much, however, as the disrespect he senses whenever he speaks with them. they know next to nothing about him, neither that he's a scholar, nor a felon, nor an elementary school dropout, yet they dare to condescend. at a recent meeting, ernie became so irritated that a little teeny f-er, he calls him, it was all he could do to restrain himself. back in my younger days, i'd have slapped the f out of that little jerk he tells us between bites. for all that, he's tried to abide by the county's wishes, knowing to do otherwise will invite pain. the crew has pulled a long string of bruising days at the lot crushing and hauling away cars that ernie forced himself to admit he'd never sell. he's reduced the inventory by 300 vehicles and arranged the survivors in neat rows. people would scarcely recognize the place. he hasn't gotten around to

everything the county asked him to do, and he had until today at 3:00, right about now, and look, in walked two officials from the county planning department, folders of paperwork in happened. ernie, chewing, watches them cross the showroom. one is the man he came close to pounding, the other politely announces they've arrived for a look around. ernie nods. he watches them leave. my original plan was to come down here and walk around the whole place with them, he says. i thought about it and thought about about it, woke up this morning and decided i wouldn't walk around with them because that's where i'd get aggravated. you did right, skinhead says. you don't need to get worked up, slick agrees. it's unbelievable the attitude they have. well, they're young, ernie says, and they've got an education. and they have the authority to be f-ing jerks. the crew is cleaning away the crumbs when the county men

return. the bearded fellow notes the improved state but adds, as expected, that much remains to be done. ernie will have to do something about the landscaping. then he gets to the county's underlying concern. most of these cars, he says, look way beyond repair, too far gone to save. too far gone to sell. he says what are the odds someone will actually buy some of these wrecks? they're scrap. they're project cars, slick offers. project cars, the planner says. evidently, the term is new to him. project cars, slick says again. people buy or cars to fix them up. they don't want them perfect. we get a lot of guys who buy cars to work on with their sons as a bonding experience. the county men stare at him. here, ernie says, let me educate you young men. on other days in other venues, ernie's lips might carry a certain menace, for an education at his hands has been known to

usher lengthy convalescence. he has stabbed at least two men, he has bitten, chewed and swallowed skin from the neck of one, and when an associate lie once too often, he i screwed through his kneecap. today he simply leads the way outside into the bright heat of late summer where in the company of his sun-chapped bulk, the county men look fresh scrubbed and pencil-limbed and unnaturally pale. so, for that matter, do i, bringing up the rear. we weave through a path until ernie stops beside a 1970 chevy che vel. see this car, he asks? just look at it for a minute. we scan the car. it's rough. black paint has turned cloudy. rust has consumed the rocker panels. chrome peels from the bumpers.

a tire is flat. ernie pops the hood. it opens with a groan. not looking good, he announces. and points to an empty space behind the illinois. the battery box is gone, all rusted away. he steps around the car's right side. see this? he runs his hand over what was once the cowell. it has decayed to nothing. there should be a piece of metal here, but it's gone. all turned to crap. the visitors exchange a glance. he seems to be making their case. ernie leans under the hood, points to the car's wheels. you shouldn't be able to see those from in here, he says. the inner wheel wells, both of them, gone. and is look at this engine. a piece of plastic sheeting has been weights in place with a foot-long piece of 2x4. ernie exposes a portal into the engine's guts. doesn't even f-ing have a a cash rate, he says. this is where the carburetor

would go, but instead it's got this. he recovers the hole and drops the hood. so, ernie says, how much would you pay for car? how much do you think this car is worth? he eyes the county men. they stare back, saying nothing. he gives them a gentle nudge. not f-ing much, probably. right, the bearded planner says. right, ernie nods. he stands silent for a moment, and i detect the slightest hint of amusement in his eyes. well, it might interest you to know, he says, that just yesterday i had a man from connecticut pay me $4500 for this car. not only did he pay me $4500, he's paying me another $85 to take it up to him in -- $850 to take up to him in connecticut. this is one of the most collectible cars there is. people search the country for this particular car in this condition. that fellow from connecticut had been lacking all over, and when he found one, he was as happy as could be. what you might see as junk,

another man's going to see as treasure. with a sweep of his arm, he takes in the hundreds of seeming beaters around us. a dozen old fords, ancient general motors' models of every type, a two-toned but faded stewed brakier commander. -- studebaker commander. somebody wants every one of them, and they'll be willing to spend some money to get them because this, here he stabs the che vel with a thick index finger, is american history. and the people who buy a car like this understand that. the tenor of the visit shifts. let the record show that on the day ernie utters this business about american history, he has not cracked a text devoted to the subject, not once. in fact, ernie says he has not read a book intended for adult consumers in 54 years of his life. he is not illiterate, though he often describes himself that

way. but having achieved only a fifth grade education -- and not a particularly high-flying one at that -- he's not much of a reader. cars he sells are fossils of the 20th century american experience, of a place and people utterly devoted to the automobile and unchanged by it in uncounten ways. evidence is plain as travelers from virginia and points farther north stream past on route 168 bound for the beaches. one after the other park among the forebears of their sleek suvs and minivans spy familiar shapes sugared in rust and find themselves transported back to moments of great personal import that they shared with cars exactly like the junkers before them. moment softened and dimmed by the year, but restored if only more seconds by the smell of a buick's ancient vinyl or the style of numbers on an old

chrysler gauge. the prow of a '48 ford pickup. many feel compelled to seek him out, some can bandy around engine sizes and performance specs, but most don't. they're excited by encountering long ago, and so they all say a simpler time in their lives, moved by a remembrance of childhood joys or clumsy teenage reconnaissance or critical junctures. memories interwoven with and inseparable from those of riding in cars, in a car exactly like this behind this skinny wheel. he's witnessed hundreds of these intimate reunions and has come to understand that as unique as they might feel to the person involved, their saily only so much. what makes americans who and how we are is tied to our status as the most automotive people on the planet. we may have individual experiences while on road, but

one individual experience different stray far from the next. driving is striving. driving is also close to universal. ernie's cars are time capsules of americanism itself. like he said, they're our history. across the rust and ruin over on the property's northern fringe sits a relic of particular note, a chevy station wagon languishing under a thick carpet of grime and flaking metal. even by the standards of its setting, it's in deplorable shape. its you are turquoise paint is n bleached and cracked like a dry lake bed. its body is dented and creased. flat tires give it a strong list to port. its interior is stripped to the bare and rotting steel, floorboards chewed away, backseat gone. the headlineer's trim draped like bunting. the driver's window is shattered and long exposure to the elements that left two craters in the front seat, even a foot

across, one lined with feathers. gamings are missing from the dash along -- gauges are missing from the dash. the clock is shattered. a thick, rusty chain snakes into the cabin through rough holes in the floor and in an elegant swap for brackets that once held the transmission in place. under the hood the radiator battery and a host of minor components were absent. even if they weren't, the car wouldn't start. its engine hasn't turned in years. it's a 1957 chevy, among the most universeally beloved models to ever roll off an assembly line makes it all the most obvious because just about everybody knows how the car should look: bumper and grill united in a pout, bumper guards jutting like tusks from the corners of its wide mouth, bright two-toned paint and a departing flourish, fins, chrome-edged and massive, jutting a foot aft of the

tailgate. 16 feet, 8 inches of era flash. as it is, classic isn't a label the wagon brings to mind. it seems beyond salvation, a goner. so consumed by rot and rust, that it isn't even worth recycling. except that an invisible asset sets this hulk apart. un impressive though it might be, the wagon has an undocks yuleed -- well documented past. such a past is elusive. most states pitch their motor vehicle records after a handful of years. the typical used car buyer doesn't long remember the seller's name and vicar is saw. details blur. often the only reliable givens are those of its birth encrypted in the numbers and letters stamped on its body and engine, figures that say nothing of its journey after leaving the assembly line. this car, though, ernie acquired this one knowing that it passed through 12 pairs of hands before his. there was a middle class

boilermaker who bought it fresh from the factory k that man's veterinarian grandson. then came a guy who ran a body shop, a fun-loving couple in the outer suburbs and a struggling single mother. a gay physician and his partner. a pawnshop other than briefly followed by a navy sailor. after that a high school dropout whose father had grown up among scores of them. next a born-again christian garbage man enamored of anything old. and finally, an electrician and weekend hot rodder who happened to know both the garbage man and tommy which is to say a dozen men and women from a dozen walks of life of varied background and varying means, a cross-section of america in the late 20th century and early 31st, all of them -- 2 isst all of them players in a single narrative for having sat behind the wheel of this chevy. right up there with its beauty, its mechanical merits, its storied place in american

culture. he has watched the travelers pull off route 168 to meet their past long enough to understand that the wagon transcends mere performance or design, it tells a story. it is a story. that of individual americans' traces of whom it carries in its worn up upholstery, their joys d anguish, childhood and old age. each dent recalls a scene, a plot twist. so it is that the chef i have heads the list -- chevy heads the list of heaps. of all the choices on the lot, it's this one, he says, he'll next spend tens of thousands of dollars returning to its former glory. that's a little taste. [applause] >> thank you. let's talk. now it's time for you guys to do your work. you've got to ask me questions. yes, sir.

>> [inaudible] [laughter] >> could you be more specific? >> [inaudible] >> oh. >> [inaudible] >> '57 chevy specifically or chevys just in general from 1911 on? >> billy fisher bought it to try to compete with ford because he had nothing to compete with. well, he made the deal with louis, right? the original chevrolet. >> oh. willie durant. >> yeah. yeah, i'm sorry. >> well, yeah, yeah. the name was just -- >> [inaudible] interesting things run through middle american mind which is the simple cheap thing that everybody wants is the one i want. i don't understand the buick, cadillac is for an egomaniac. something's wrong with a ford.

there's a strange psychological idiom -- >> the cult of chevrolet that you don't understand. >> i was never a chevy guy. >> well, you know, i've got to admit i've never owned a chevy myself, but that's mere happenstance because i've owned a couple olds mobiles, and it wasn't like i looked for one when i bought one, but i needed a car at time, and these oldsmobiles fell into my hands. the thing about a chevrolet, you know, it's a car that was designed for the aspiring middle class, you know? it was a car that was -- it was a good starter car, it was a good car for the fiscally conservative, it was a car that by standards of this day was certainly no less reliable than any other car on the road. by today's standards, of course, the old chevys were complete

disasters liability wise. but every car on the road was. and when's the last time you saw a car on the side of the road overheating? it just doesn't happen anymore, and that used to be a daily thing you saw everywhere. >> [inaudible] >> go the microphone, please. go to the microphone. there's a mic -- >> oh. well, why don't we -- >> we're on tv. >> or i can repeat the questions for those -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> the mere existence of the term "a chevy guy" really answers your question. i mean, there were ford guys, there were chevy guys, you know? there's people that say friends don't let friends drive fords. you know, it's just a basic part of culture. and i don't think that if you look at the '57 chevy, you certainly can't say that it's bland. >> no, you can't. >> or the '59 especially. >> certainly not bland. you know, the -- you still see

that sort of brand identification in nascar, maybe a little less than you did a handful of years ago, but there are people who, you know, there are ford guys, like you suggest, who will never buy a chevy and chevy guys who will never buy a ford, and i don't know why that is. i don't know why that brand identity is as lockstep as it is except that, like i said earlier, cars are not like any other possession we have. and we develop a personal relationship with these inanimate objects that transcends good sense. and we imbue them with all sorts of personality traits that, clearly, an amalgamation of metal and glass and rubber does not possess. and i think it's easy to kind of take that next step and to come to see not only your car as your buddy, your trusty steed, your sidekick, but all of your buddy's cousins, you know? i'm making an attempt here. i don't understand it any more intellectually myself than you

do, but, you know, i find that the older i get the less romantic i get about things automotive. i get much -- i've become much more practical than i was in my younger days when i did kind of see my car as my trusty steed. now it's just a camry. >> i just wanted to say that i think this is the age where we have been taught that equality is the password of everything. everything is functional, everything is equal, and cars have become appliances. this is why toyota is -- and toyota is feeding us, this is what's interesting to me in the last 20 years of culture, toyota is using marketing and actual manufacturing techniques that they stole directly from general motors in the '30s, '40s and 50s of marketing, of how to sell a car, how to take the same platform and build three different cars, how to sell packages of accessories. all of this general motors already did way back 40, 50 years ago. and it's interesting the

american people don't know anything about this. they think these are new, brilliant ideas. but that's because they think of cars as appliances now. they're like toasters and refrigerators. the if it's functional, you use it. i don't care if it's pretty. it'd be nice if it's a nice color, and we've gotten to this generic world now that we live in where people don't have -- but what's interesting is i think you're right, they still -- you still do bonding whether you think you're going to do it or not, you're still doing it. and it's just people telling great stories about my corolla for, 988 cloal -- corolla, ask you're going, an '88 corolla? >> on its surface, a pretty unromantic piece of machinery, but it has nothing to do with the relationship. well, it's interesting that you mention that cars have become appliances because, you know, the fact is that -- at least my suspicion is that their incredible reliability, improved reliability is a big piece of that. part of your old relationship

with your car back in the day that established that bond was that it inconvenienced you pretty severely at times, you know? it failed you. it suffered a catastrophic breakdown right when you couldn't afford it to. you wound up in the rain on the roadside or whatever. and you don't have those experiences all that often anymore. it just doesn't happen. people drive cars, you know, they used to at the time this '57 chevy was produced, you were expected to keep a car three, four years, and you'd sell it and buy a new car. that dovetailed nicely with the state of technology at the time, because a car that reached six figures on the odometer was a relative rarity. it was, you know, it was a choreography of all mechanical moving parts. there was nothing solid state about it. it was bound to break down a heck of a lot more. and now we, the average car on the american road is 12 years old which is the oldest it's ever been by far.

and, you know, i drove my last car for 15 years. i'll probably drive the one i'm driving now for 15 years. anybody else? >> well, there's -- i like how you did that perry como style. >> you know, the car culture is really what you're talking about, i think, here, and it's probably going to in history turn out to be a unique period of time when everyone could have their own personal transportation device and drive along the highways to wherever you wanted to go whenever you wanted to go. we're already getting to the stages where sometimes the it's painful to fill -- sometimes it's painful to pill up your car, you know, with gas because it's getting more expensive relative to, you know, what it used to be. another thing is that people used to be able to work on their own cars, you know? you didn't have to have a

computer diagnostic machine in order to change the spark plugs, you know? if you had a big plymouth with a six cylinder in it, you could sit on the -- you know, you could actually sit on the fender and change your plugs, you know? you had plenty of room to do stuff, and there wasn't that much that needed, you know, it may need doing more off, but there wasn't that many places that needed replacing -- parts that needed replacing. it wasn't all fuel injected and stuff. and so the period of history that, you know, your guy and his vintage car lot is dealing with is a very unique period of time which is, you know, sort of in the process of fading, you know, even as we speak. >> yeah. well, that's all great points. you know, if i were to pop hood of my toyota now, i can identify the battery and precious little else.

i mean, there's a big plastic shroud that covers everything, and god knows what's under there. there's a v6 somewhere, but you sure can't see it from, you know, from the roadside. you know, it's interesting to hear -- and i'm not sure that you're waxing nostalgic there, you know, because you didn't place a value on whether it was a good thing that you could work on your car back in the day. the fact that you had to work on your car back in the day. it's, you know, on the one hand that do-it-yourself, the opportunity for do-it-yourself repair is gone can, as you say. on the other, the necessity for do-it-yourself repair is gone as well. those solid state components that require the computer diagnostics, they never fail. or if they do, it's so infrequently that maybe once many your ownership history with

a car you own for 20 years you're going to have to mess with it. i guess i feel the same way about it republican as i do when -- almost as i do when i hear people say they don't ask cars -- they don't build cars like they used to. you'd be dead after you ran into a brick wall because it had no crumple zonings. it transferred all of the shock of an accident through the metal and right into you. and you became, essentially, the crumple zone. and for an illustration of how true that is, all you have to do is go on the web site of the insurance institute for highway safety, which is the outfit in virginia that does all the crash dummy tests. and in 2009 for their 50th anniversary as part of a party marking their birthday, they ran a 1959 chevy impala at 40 miles an hour into a 2009 chevy malibu for an offset head-on collision test. and if you see it in super

slo-mo as these two cars approach each other, the malibu looks like it's an infant baby of the impala. i mean, it's dwarfed by this thing, and you just think, oh, my god, that malibu's going to be creamed. and then they hit, and they have cameras set up inside the cars, and it becomes instantly obvious that whoever was unfortunate enough to drive the '59 impala that got into an accident like this was going to be killed nine different ways. ..