Which was why, when I was making small talk with the clerk inside the lobby of the motel, as I was checking in, and he began to tell me about the surrounding area, which was where he happened to have grown up, I actually listened to what he was saying and asked him one or two follow-up questions, and tried to commit to memory everything that he said, though I didn’t tell him that the reason I was doing so was because I was ‘gathering material’ for a book, and that he and the things that he was saying might end up in the book, in some form or another, were I to actually complete it.