He was raised in a boxcar and turned 21 in San Quentin. Then he became one of country music's greatest stars. The life and times of an American outlaw
Some afternoons, when his kids aren’t around and he doesn’t feel like practicing with his band, Merle Haggard will load a pipe, climb onto his John Deere golf cart and take a ride around his property, 200 acres of rugged California ranch land at the northern edge of the San Joaquin Valley. He’ll check on projects that are always under way but never seem to get finished – the mending of a fence in his sheep pen; planting redwood trees; the construction of a waterfall – or he might park on a wooden bridge that crosses the lake where he fishes for bass and catfish, and smoke some weed.
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