“Hey as long as you never give up,
You always have a chance thangs are gonna get
better.”
With all
rights, I guess I shoulda, I guess, check on that when I was sixteen and had a
car wreck and stayed in the hospital for a couple of months and I got to come
back, and I get back and the doctor saw me and told my family well uh, there’s
ten percent chance out of a hundred that he’ll ever have a normal life and I
worked all my life up till right now.
My mom and dad divorced when I was twelve, and uh, my grandparents
adopted me and I lived with them till I was grown. Actually when my parents separated and divorced I just, I didn’t
really care. I was a perfect student in
school and everything and after that happened, I started failing in school, one
thang lead to another and I ended up, when I got about fifteen I decided I
wanted to work for a living instead of going to school so I quit school and I
been working every since. Never have been able to get a real job, not what I
call a real job anyway. I just always
doing odd carpet work, farm work and stuff like that.
In ninety-one I had a real bad timber cuttin’
accident, and I stayed disabled for almost four years, for I could get back to
work. Had a tree that fell on me when I
was toppin’ hung off the ground, laid my head four inches into the ground, tore
all the muscles loose from the bone on uh, the right side from my tail bone to
my right elbow and uh, had to have knee surgery done, uh, run a stick through
my jaw, lost a whole lot of time, I don’t remember, maybe six months of stuff
that’s gone.
A lot of little problems I had it uh, the accident
caused me to have seizures uh, up until, [silence] well I
had one up in January, it was the first night out of three years but hey, it
took um five, six years to get them under control and uh, they said it was from
getting hit in the head so hard, scare tissue, so that kind of limited me on
jobs too. After that, couldn’t get a
job working off the ground. It started
changin’ a lot of the way I did things.
The way I thought about things.
Back in the fall, well it was October uh, got outta work again, like I
do about every winter, and um, got on the Families First program and one of
their offers was for me to get my GED.
So if that’s what I need to do then, then I started thinking all kinds
of possibilities and hey it’s the fact of never really having nothing and I
don’t want my kids to have to be like that.
I wanna do better for them. They
ten and thirteen years old and they got a lot ahead of them, and I know both of
them gonna wanna go to school, they gonna wanna got to college cause ain’t
neither on of them wanna have to work like I have, I mean I’ve worked until I’m
38 years old now and some mornings when I get up it takes me fifteen minuets to
stand up right just from the way I’ve worked all my life. Using my back and using my muscles when I
have enough intelligence that I shouldn’t haven’t have never been doin’ it in
the first place, and uh, the teacher I had this winter taught me that one
morning, she inspired a lot of that. I
was just doing it in the beginning I would not tell a story, I was doing it to
participate with the program so we could get the help that we needed, you know,
and then uh, she kind of inspired me to. “Well look man why do you just keeping
trying to kill yourself to make a living when you could be doing other stuff?”
And
uh, it really got me to thinking and me and my wife did some serious talkin’
about it, and uh, I got a older daughter, she just graduated from college, me
and her talked about it and she told me what she was going through with her
computer courses cause she majored in computers and uh, she told me “well it
ain’t gon be easy”, she said “but I think you can do it”.
Right now I’m in the process of trying to get
enrolled in vocational school to try to do industrial maintenance, which right
now from what I checked into, it’s one of the best growing careers there is
cause it offers computer courses, and in all your factories now everything’s
computerized, and it pays the mega bucks.
I had four or five factories I could have had employment if I had of had
the skills to do it, and all of them has consisted of having computer
training. I think uh, I done stayed in
there back during the winter and all trying to get my GED passed, yeah I think
I done got back in the routine of it now, and I got two children that help
me. Everybody is kind of standing
behind me on it too, and uh, it’s keeping me, my head up about it, but uh, I
really, I just, I really think that uh, the main thing making me wanna do it
and want anything is my kids and uh, that and my wife also. She’s kind of like me, she never really had
much, so I figured if I can do this and get through this, it’s gonna make a lot
of difference. I won’t, I ain’t givin’
up, sure that’s something I learned, as long as you never give up, you always
got a chance thangs gonna get better.
That’s something that uh, I uh, I been told that all my life but I never
really realized it. I don’t think until
lately, and uh, I’ve got to where I’ve been tellin’ some of my friends that.
I
got some friends that’s been havin’ some problems with this and that, and I
said remember one thang if you don’t never give up, it will always get better
cause if you keep trying its got to get better. And I hope I’m still here, working a 9 to 5 job with some major
benefits, that’s what I’m hopin’ for. I
figure it will take me at least [silence] eighteen, twenty months of
that to get out of school and get my training done. I’ve traveled working, I don’t know, I just never have felt
comfortable anywhere except here. I
like it better where I’m at now better than anywhere I’ve ever been
before. I ain’t claimin’ that it’s
because I’m out here in the country and it ain’t nobody out here to bother me
and it’s also the first time I ever had anything of my own, well it ain’t mine
yet. I’m workin’ on that. I was informed uh, last week that uh, as
long as I was a full time student I could uh, I could still be eligible for the
Families First program, so that means if I stay in the Families First program that’s
my house payment made every week, every month that I don’t have to have a
nervous break down, how are we going to pay this house payment and me going to
school. I probably wouldn’t survived
this long without it, considering the way works been. I mean it’s uh, it’s kept me and my family, it’s kept my bills
pretty much, I not going to say caught up, but it’s kept me from losing
everything I had. Whenever I started in
Families First, we was totally without transportation, and uh, they helped us
get a vehicle going. Uh, it’s just
opened up several doors that I’ve never had before. It’s uh, really given me somebody to lean on, several times it
has, it sure has. It’s uh, kept
groceries on the table, and electricity turned on for us this winter.
Take
advantage of the opportunity while it’s there [silence] cause it
ain’t everyday you get a second chance. If you reach out there and take advantage of it, it will make a
difference. If nothing else in the
motivation you have, the way you feel about yourself. Uh, just knowing I got that diploma in there hanging on my wall
means a lot to me. If you can’t be
happy with yourself, you can’t be happy with your family, you can’t have no
friends you feel happy with. And
that’s, I guess that’s one of the thing living life the way I did teach me, you
know, try to be satisfied a little bit, if you got to do anything else just be
happy with yourself. I’ve had so many
of my friends to tell me, and its something a lot of them never said before, so
I got to finally gear up, and I believe, uh (silence) if I hadn’t of realize
that, I probably wouldn’t have ever had nothing if I didn’t get my diploma or a
GED. I just, it’s gotten to the point
to where it’s impossible to find any kind of job, except a minimum wage job without
a GED or a diploma. And with two kids
to raise it’s, and grand baby, it’s just uh, you got to have all the education
you can get to survive in this world, I believe that with all my heart now, if
not ever.