CHICAGO -- Robert Wolf, more commonly and affectionately known as Bob, is no longer a kid, and hasn’t been for some time. He has long had white hair and a white beard, and his eyesight isn’t what it used to be. But he is still filled with the coltish enthusiasm that fuels his desire to create what he calls an “autobiography of America.”

That has been his mission for decades now, ever since he ran away from home and began to travel the country, hitchhiking and riding freight trains, stopping here and there and eventually capturing the thoughts and dreams, the fears and joys, the words of people across this country.

They are what some call “ordinary people” and what Wolf calls “everyday people,” and here is what one of them has to say in a new edition of “Coyotes and Stars: Stories from the American Southwest.”

This is from Clyde Shepherd, cowboy: “We might start work at two-thirty in the morning, dependin’ on how far we were goin’, what pasture we were workin.’ … Wintertime, you wouldn’t hardly ever take a bath … I think about seventeen days was the longest I ever went without a bath.”

Shepherd is just one of the dozens of voices in the book, he is also the person to whom the book is dedicated and about whom Wolf writes, “I will never again meet a man like Clyde Shepherd. His was an open and welcoming nature that invited strangers into his life … He was one of those country folk, now gone.”

For a man who has earned degrees from Columbia University and the University of Chicago, as has Wolf, he is able to communicate honestly with everybody. That seems a manifestation of his sincerity and curiosity, characteristics that he once employed when he did a bit of writing for the Tribune. And it was during those 1980s years that he met and fell in love with and married the great singer Bonnie Koloc, who is a talented visual artist and whose photographic skills are responsible for the accompanying portrait of her husband.

Wolf began conducting writing workshops for homeless people in Nashville, where he and Koloc lived for a couple of years, and then did the same with farm workers after they settled in northeastern Iowa in 1990.

“I have always believed that anyone who can tell a story can write one,” Wolf says. “And that has been proven over and over in every workshop.”

As the stories began to pile up, it was Koloc who suggested that they deserved to be in book form. So Wolf founded Free River Press, which has published nearly 30 titles, highlighted by the bound story results of workshops held in the Midwest, Mississippi Delta and soon those from New York and Chicago.

“Coyotes and Stars” is the latest, “the outcome of 12 years of effort by many people.” It is a delight, though shadowed by the realization that many of the stories concern aspects of life that are vanishing. Or are already gone.

Here is Beulah Brannan, who ran a cafe: “I grew up on a ranch. My dad bought a farm and they drilled oil wells on it. Magic City was a little town that sprouted oil wells, and we had a little money… (But) after we lost our money, we just kind of existed, like everybody else… I was married in 1939. My husband and I had a prenuptial agreement: you go to the ballet and theater with me and I’ll go hunting and fishing with you.”

You will meet Wolf in some of his writings in the book, such as, “When I decided to create an American self-portrait through writing workshops, America still seemed a quiltwork of cultures that could be maintained. But now decades later, the quiltwork has vanished and can live only in the imagination.”

I would argue that they are also alive in the pages of this book.

Pat Speuda, artist in New Mexico: “I have a home with major appliances, my own paintings on the walls, and handmade shelves filled with books. My husband’s experiments with weed-based mulch paid off — we now have more vegetables than we can eat. And we are happy patrons of the new espresso bar on Route 66. Our cats have a hangout under the old travel trailer, and I have my little pool in the backyard, under the trees… I can’t do anything about the weather.”

Free River Press publications have been featured on such programs as “CBS News Sunday Morning,” on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.” There was, for years, a weekly radio program, “American Mosaic with Robert Wolf,” with many stories from Free River Press books read by their authors.

Wolf and Koloc recently finished a book tour in New Mexico and Texas. “Bonnie does most of the driving. My eyes aren’t what they used to be,” Wolf told me. “She has been so supportive over these 35 years.”

He remembers the night they met. It was at the Green Mill and they were introduced by harmonica genius Howard Levy. At that point, Wolf had never heard Koloc sing but, he says, “Oh, we had a wonderful conversation.”

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