Hoping to someday write the Pretty Good American Novel, I applied to graduate English programs and got accepted at Virginia, Vanderbilt, and Indiana.

Indiana had a well-respected English department and a great basketball team under Bobby Knight. Virginia was top-notch on the academic side. But it was a surprise when Vanderbilt offered me a full-ride PhD fellowship. The entire three years was free, plus I’d get a two-hundred-dollar monthly stipend. Back in 1970, two hundred bucks a month went a long way, especially for somebody with beans-and-hot-dog tastes like me.

My Woodstock buddy B. J. Stringer and I decided to tour the South and check out Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee, that summer of ’70. I had never even seen the university. No tour, no interview, no nothing.

The two of us had no money either. At least we had a game plan. We were bumming around in this old jalopy, and every third or fourth day, we’d stay in a seedy motel, something that was dirt cheap but didn’t bring to mind the shower scene in Psycho. The other days, we’d sleep outside because it was too hot to sleep in the car.

Summers in the South, man. Super-muggy and mosquito-y, and sleeping outside sucked. This was also the summer of the movie Easy Rider. Remember that one? A couple of dope-smoking, Harley-riding hippies played by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. Spoiler alert: they get beat up with baseball bats.

As two long-haired hippies ourselves, whenever BJ and I slept outdoors that summer, we had continuing nightmares about getting brained by ball bats.

Sometimes sleeping inside was just as spooky. When we finally got to Nashville, we pulled up in front of a homey-looking bed-and-breakfast. When we entered the foyer, we were greeted by a hundred or so of the creepiest mama and baby dolls you’d ever see. But the price was right.

So we double-locked the door in our room. And that night, we traded nightmares featuring fungo bats crushing our skulls for much scarier ones filled with creepy polyvinyl dolls with beady eyes and frozen expressions.

The next day, we toured Vanderbilt and I remember thinking, Do I really want to go to grad school? How will my long hair go over in Tennessee? Why does everyone I pass on this campus smile and say hello? That’s not how we do it in New York.

But I decided I did want to go to grad school, and being a grad student at Vanderbilt wound up being a life-changing event. Vanderbilt was the first place where I enjoyed school. I was reading books and plays that interested me. I had a class in creative writing that was actually creative. What a concept. And I made great new Southern friends, like Lynda Cole from Kentucky and Lewis Lavine from Florida.

Unfortunately, it was a long drive from Vanderbilt to my family’s new home in Lexington, Massachusetts. I would make the trip without stopping to sleep—twenty-four, twenty-five hours on the road. Which was crazy.

What was even crazier: while I drove, I’d write Broadway musicals in my head.

I would literally make up the musicals. Concept, original songs, lyrics, story line. It was nuts, but at least it kept me awake while I drove. Later, I wished I’d thought about writing the songs down, but at the time I figured, Nah. I’m not a musician. I’m not a lyricist. I don’t play any instruments. So it didn’t seem like fertile ground. And at that point, being totally honest with myself, I didn’t believe I could be any kind of writer.