Wild man blues

"If you play music, the first thing they want you to do is pawn your guitar," Adkins says of his experience with the ladies. "They don't want you out there around the women. I lived with a woman once, and she said, 'I don't want you going out there.' And I said, 'All right, lookie here. I'll give you the guitar, drums, and harmonica, and you go play. I'll be glad to stay here.' And she said, 'I can't do that.' And I said, 'Well, how you gonna eat?' 'Yeah, but I don't want you out there with all them whores,' she said. She was standing there naked, and I said, 'What the hell do you think you are?'"

Adkins asks for a lift into town to get his mail. It's raining now, and none of the cars he's noodling on is operating. We drive down the hill into Madison to the sound of wipers squeaking across the windshield. He stalks out of the post office struggling with an overflowing sack of mail from distant admirers. En route back to his hollow, I ask the man who just got his first telephone if he has any ideals.

"I'd like to try and help a lot of people and stuff," he offers after a moment's hesitation. "There are a lot of poor people up here." A long silence follows until we pull up to his trailer. He climbs out of the car, thanks me for the lift, and begins to walk off. He hesitates again, turns, sticks his head in the passenger window, and asks, in all earnestness, "You ever eaten any squirrel?