Boom Dreams

Boom DreamsSomewhere in the lonely middle of the high Wyoming prairie last February, I picked up a hitchhiker who'd been standing for an hour in a hard snowstorm, in a wind that was 14 degrees below zero. He looked to be about 55 years old and he was about half frozen by the time he climbed into my rented Oldsmobile. He was toting a beat-up leather suitcase with a rag for a handle, and he'd been on the road for six days, from Youngstown, Ohio, He said he was broke and had been out of work for si...