Now when I try to conjure my essence as a young man, I see myself waking up one morning to the overpowering odor of cow dung, with not a clue in the world where I am, or how I got there.  As I lie there in my sleeping bag, holding my nose, trying to put it all together, the sun pops out from behind a pair of chocolate-colored mountains, flares across a great desert valley, glints through some wood slats and hits me smack in the eye.  After regaining my sight, I find myself lying in a sidetracked cattle car, in a vast field of green tomatoes. Slithering out of my sleeping bag, I heave it and my backpack from the rail car, leap to the track, and start beating the dried dung off them with one of my boots.  That done, I stagger down the embankment, squat by an…