I’m going in

Obligatory shot of where I am at the moment. Not bad, huh?

I am in San Diego again, working on a new podcast episode — or most likely, a series of episodes. It doesn’t fit at all what I had in mind when I started Passing Through just two episodes ago.

For one thing, the subject of this story doesn’t live on the road. Which is okay, because I live on the road, right? Think of it as an updated version of the old Route 66 TV series, in which Martin Milner and George Maharis drove a cool Corvette to a new town every week, got involved in someone’s life and, of course, made everything better.

This may take a bit longer, since there’s only one of me, and I can’t guarantee a better outcome. You can do that in fiction, but this is real. Also: no Corvette.

In my original vision for the podcast, had planned to interview full-time vandwellers, RVers, and other nomads about their lives on the move — but then, Ronnie Murphy’s story hit me like a palm to the face. I’ve known about it for several years. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

I know why: because Ronnie’s story scares me

Ronnie is a Vietnam vet disabled by gunshots and shrapnel when he was 19. The Veterans Administration claims that he was wanted on a fugitive warrant in Texas for several years in the 90s. So the VA has been withholding $861/month from his benefits for what it calls overpayments during the time when it says he was ineligible. So far, he’s down over $67,000.

But Ronnie says they’ve got the wrong guy. He’s been fighting that decision for years now, and getting nowhere.

I want to find out why

Which requires actual digging — real journalism — and I am no reporter. During my 22 years in radio news I was assigned to report exactly three stories, and I failed at all three. Call it stage fright, call it social anxiety, I never could work up the nerve to stick a microphone in someone’s face and ask questions.

In the studio, I did plenty of interviews without a problem. The subjects came to me — authors, mostly, selling books or agendas of some kind. That was easy. I was on my home turf; I was in control. All I had to do was book the interviews, and the authors would show up on time, ready to regurgitate the same answers they had given a hundred times before. I tried to come up with new questions but to be honest, I was as much on autopilot as they were.

Out in the world, where anything could happen — and usually did — well, I’d rather not remember. Or try it again.

But Ronnie’s story needs telling, and I need to prove to myself that I can tell it.

First up, the documents of Ronnie’s case

Ronnie’s records

I need to read them all, and try to make sense of them, before my interview with Ronnie tomorrow morning.

Understanding boring government forms is not my strong suit — or anyone’s, for that matter. That’s why there are so few good investigative journalists. They have to dig through boring haystacks of information to find the needles that knit everything together.

I have an inkling there’s a reason government documents are so freaking dull: to scare people like me away.

But no more! I’m going in

And I have a real, honest-to-goodness reporter on my side: Jessica Bruder, who writes awesome magazine articles and books (and even teaches journalism at Columbia University!) She has agreed to hold my hand while I dive in.

But just in case, if you don’t hear from me in a week, call 911.