In your new book, “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die,” you write about enjoying bumblebee fights in Texas as a child. What is that exactly?

Abbott, where I grew up, is a small farm town, and you knew all the farmers. They would come in on weekends to do their shopping and talk about bumblebees’ nests that they had run into while they were out plowing their fields. They would tell us kids where the bumblebees were, and we’d go out on Sunday afternoons and fight bumblebees.

You would get stung so many times that your eyes would swell shut. This was fun?

That shows how bored you can get in Abbott.

You’ve been given a lot of credit for uniting two sworn enemies, hippies and rednecks. How did you do it?

I threw the first Fourth of July picnic down in Dripping Springs, Tex., which brought together the longhaired cowboys and the short-haired cowboys and the no-haired cowboys. They all sat around and drank beer and smoked some dope and listened to some good music and found out that there wasn’t a lot they had to be afraid of.

You’ve told people that the reason you smoke pot is “it calms the rage.” You have rage?

You’ve heard that people with red hair have high tempers? It’s true in this case. My temper has always been something I’ve had to guard against. To smoke a little pot, it might be a little easier to control.