About ten years ago, two deaths in my family sent me searching through old boxes and files for a picture someone had taken during a camping trip in southern Illinois around 1970. My obsession worsened for about a month until the person most affected by those deaths sent me a scan of the photograph.

That first ominous little tickle in the back of my throat came on the morning after a fairly raucous evening of hand-rolled cigars, butter-smooth rum and, of all things, the hideous mixture of vodka and Red Bull. It was one of those nights that, at my age, you only endure on a far-flung fishing trip away from the steady influence of someone who has your best interests at heart. I remember looking around the dark balcony of the flashy, noisy and generally chaotic nightclub and thinking to myself, “What the hell am I doing here?”