Stasia Shepard

I'm like, Dad.

And he was like... hung up on me.

She said, oh, well, Dad used to get all these cheap novels, and then he would write porn scenes, and he would have typists insert the porn scenes in these crappy novels and resell them.

We got in this rickety old truck with all our stuff jammed in it.

And my father's Encyclopedia of Folk Music was in there very carefully packed.

Those were the biggest boxes that we took.

And all our other stuff was just kind of strewn in this truck and it wasn't very well packed.

And when we were driving down the highway, I remember this.

It was so weird.

You know, people were pointing at us and trying to get our attention.

And we were like, I mean, I remember my mother being like, wow, why are they waving at us?

And then realizing, oh, our stuff is flying out.

Like our slim belongings that we had pared down from selling almost everything else, those things were flying out.

Not the Encyclopedia of Folk Music, but my clothes and what few things.

He told my mother, who he had been with for whatever, 23 years, that he was taking a short trip to Los Angeles.

But when she woke up in the morning, she realized that he had taken way more than what you would need for a short trip.

And he did not come back.

He glamorized the life of being a grifter.

He glamorized the life of being a con man.

That's what I understand now, that he...