My life hasn't been that exciting or at least not as compared to some of the post I have read. I was a delinquent in my early teen years, not from my up-bringing but from my wild side. There weren't many things that I was afraid to try.
My brother survived two tours of duty in Vietnam as a Marine. I didn't want to join while he was in. It would have killed my mother with worry that two of her sons were in Vietnam at the same time. When my brother got out of the Corps, I joined and went marching through the rice paddies of Vietnam as a grunt. It wasn't pretty but I survived despite my ignorance, youth and experiences. I gave up on weed while I was there. I got scared and paranoid so bad one time, I just knew if I was going to go, I would take a lot of the enemy with me, so I gave up on the weed and tried to figure out a way to survive. I squeaked by and made it back home with body in tact, ekking out a living running a Carroll printing press and shift, until I got into sales. Went to college for a couple of years but found working full time and going to college full time a little brutal so I opted to give the job my best effort. Good move for me. Got lucky, eventually started my own business in 1986 and am still rolling today.
Fished and hunted quite a lot after the Marine Corps, lived in Mississippi with my wife and soon to be born son.
Somehow, early on, before it became popular for the business forms industry, I became enamored with graphic design and typesetting and hired a computer guy to work for me while I did sales. He taught me how to typeset and design business forms and my company was the first company in Louisiana to typeset digitally. Customers back then were used to getting proofs back in two weeks and I promised two days and could do it in one day if needed. That solidified my relationships with my customer base for many years until others caught up with me. I still typeset and sell today. It's been fun, profitable and interesting for me and continues to be so even now.
Kept my love for pool away from my son for his development years and he earned a college degree and went on to become an IT manager for a large insurance company and is doing really well for himself. I don't have to worrry about him borrowing money from dad. It might be the other way around if the market gets any worse than it already is.
My wife and I have been married 38 years. I'm a one-woman kind of guy.
She's been good for me and an angel to put up with my obsessive behavior with pool. You already know about my penchant for doing commentary and competing at pool. I enjoy writing about pool and other things. I've been writing an auto-biography which is more a novel about my family's history which actually began in 1900 during the Great Hurricaine of 1900. It's almost finished now after several years of writing. I plan to print an original hard back book for my son, just for posterity. It's really just a recounting of my life and that of my family. I think I write not for the benefit of others or the ego-stroking that might come my way but because it just feels good to sometimes let the words fly from my fingertips. Than God for those two years of typing.
I seldom ever make drafts of anything that I write. Writing isn't a labor just like my career in printing has not been a labor. It is something I do with relish and enjoy each and every minute. Unfortunately, I never developed the discipline for writing professionally. That might be a regret but maybe not.
Have to get to the pool room to visit with my son who is finally deciding to learn how to play pool or I would just keep writing for another 20 minutes.
