Years ago, while fishing a giant flat in the backcountry of Long Island in the Bahamas, I came across my first “mud” — a busy conglomeration of jacks, snappers and barracudas, and a few bonefish — engaged in a mass of moving fish. SIlvery scales caught rays of sunshine and flashed them back into the heavens as they fed on a ball of bait. The larger fish, like the ‘cudas, were chasing the smaller fish that were probably chasing something even smaller, like bunker or shad.

When you’re in college a long way from home, and you don’t have your own wheels, you take a ride from anybody who offers to give you one. This is a roundabout way of saying that I don’t remember whose car I was in when I heard “Six Days on the Road” for the first time, circa 1976-77. What I do remember, though, is that when those irresistibly propulsive licks exploded out of the speakers, I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.

“Jesus Christ!,” I blurted out. “What the #$%* are we listening to?”