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This blog's life: could Nate Nance be the future of the media? Only if his mom keeps giving him gas money.

Article Excerpt
The street where Nate Nance lives in McGregor, a town of 4,700 west of Waco, is two short blocks from Texas Highway 317; you can see cars whizzing by from his driveway. That makes it noisy enough, but the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe railroad tracks sit just outside the fence of his backyard, so you can only imagine how hard it is for him to sleep in every morning or watch the History Channel in peace. Actually, to be more accurate, the driveway and the backyard are his mother's, not his, seeing as how he still lives with her, which explains the veryun-22-year-old-male-like display of crafts on the front porch. On one side, next to an American flag, is an iron stand painted with pictures of birdhouses and butterflies. On the other is a flat stone engraved with the words "Welcome to the Nut House."

When I visited Nate in late May, he greeted me at the door in an undershirt, khakis, and bare feet; the family dachshund, known variously as Saint Nicholas and The Jesus, jumped and yapped. The house is small and squat and made of brick, with a one-car garage recently converted into what Nate calls a family room but is really a computer room, as are most rooms in the house. Three people share the place--Nate, who works 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. as a sports clerk at a newspaper; his mom, Brenda "Candy" Lewallen, who drives a forklift at Smead Manufacturing, her employer for 32 years; and his stepfather, William Lewallen Sr., who retired as an assembly line worker in the chiller department at Trane, the air conditioner maker, in 2004--and each has a computer. "We're...

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