Rarely seen without a drink in one hand and a smoke in the other, Ron White has had a career that has taken him from the cassette racks of truck stops to the world of stadiums and feature films — but all the while they’ve called him “Tater Salad.” The myth around the Fritch, TX, native’s famous nickname has to do with a flippant remark made to an arresting police officer. He told the officer that he had once before broken the law under the sinister alias of “Tater Salad,” the officer believed him, and it was forever on his arrest record. He later admitted that it was just something he picked up in the Navy, but he allows the myth to flourish since being a smart-ass has been central to his act since the mid-’90s, when he released a string of albums on Laughing Hyena, a label that catered to truck stops with their “Trucker Humor!”-labeled releases. Ron has always been a storyteller, from the time he was a boy growing up in a small town in the middle of Texas oil country to selling windows for a living in Arlington to performing in sold-out theaters and arenas as a headlining comedian all across the country. For two decades he lived the life of a struggling comedian bouncing around to comedy clubs and driving to gigs in his beat-up Nissan pickup. In short, he paid his dues.