A Little About Myself
Well I guess the best place to start is in the beginning. I was born on Nov. 28, 1952 at our home up a holler near Haysi, Va. {Dickenson County}. I am the middle one of seven children. My Mom was a homemaker, and my dad was a coal miner. We lived in a small house. Haysi is in the mountains of Southwest Va., so all us kids grew up in a rugged environment. We didnt have much as kids, my dad didn't make much money working in the coal mines, but we got by. We always had food and clothes. I remember a lot of our clothes would come in boxes from donations from a church, and of course we had hand-me-downs from our older brothers and sisters. Most of our food was grown in a garden or from the woods and rivers in our area. We ate a lot of rabbits, squirrls, and fish that we caught from the river that was near our house. We have also raised our own hogs to butcher, and raised our own chickens for the eggs and for Sunday dinner. My Mom would can all the vegetables from our garden so we could have our vegetables all year. We would get milk from the neighbors since we didnt have a milk cow. We usually had Sunday dinner at our grandparents house. They lived on the opposite mountain. We would go there after church and there would be a lot of us grandkids, and Aunts and Uncles there also. We lived in a small house by a creek and all us kids would share a bedroom, but we managed just fine. We would sometimes get our own coal out of a coal mine that was up the holler near our Uncle's house. Me my brother Larry and our dad would spend a day mining coal and haul it down to our house by a mule and sled that we borrowed from our Grandfather. Coal is what we heated our house with and also my mom used it to cook with on the wood burning stove to make our meals. We all went to Haysi schools, and we all did very well. I loved school. I thought it was a lot of fun, not the school work but all the friends that I had. We always had a good time.
My dad passed away on July 4, 1966. I was 13 years old. That was such a great loss for my family. He did so much with his family. We would go on picnics and lots of other events, and he was always doing things with his family. He taught us how to work, have fun and be responsible kids. We all missed him dearly. It was pretty hard for our family after he died, but we made it ok.
I graduated high school in 1971, and started working at the John Flannagan Dam. I was in maintenance, and took care of all of the campgrounds, mowing grass and going out on the lake to get driftwood that would float onto the lake from the rivers that supplied the lake. We would get the driftwood off the lake so the boaters would not hit any of it and have an accident. I worked there for a most of the summer of 1971. My Aunt and cousins came to Virginia for a visit and asked me if I wanted to go back to Ohio where they lived and work there. I said yes.
I lived with my Aunt and her kids in Belleville, Ohio. There I got a job as a forklift driver in a brick factory. My job was to load bricks on trucks and train cars. While I was living in Ohio I would go to to Michigan on the weekends to visit my brother Larry and my sister Sue, both of which lived in Michigan and worked there. I had met Rose there on one of those weekend visits. She would later become my wife. Rose and I started dating and we would see each other on the weekend trips that I would make from Ohio. It was only about a 3 1/2 hour drive. Instead of me making all these weekend trips to Michigan each weekend I thought I would just move there so I could see Rose.
So I did this during the fall of 1971 after staying in Ohio for only a few months. After I moved to Michigan, Rose and I started dating on a regular basis. My first job in Michigan was working in maintenance for a mobile home park. Then after a while I got a job as a roofer in a roofing company. We would mostly work in Detroit replacing shingles on roofs. I didnt stay very busy with this job due to the weather since it was an outside job, so I took another job as a machine operator in a steel processing factory. My job there was to process steel to ship to the auto makers. I worked there for about 3 1/2 years and during all this time I still dated Rose on a regular basis. Then in 1974 Rose and I decided to get married. Our wedding was July 13, 1974. We went to Virginia Beach on our honeymoon. We visited my brother Larry in Ky., who had already gotten married and moved to Ky. During our visit to Larry and Belinda in Ky. Rose and I decided to also move to Ky. since Larry had a job lined up for me there.
We moved to Ky. in 1974, and I started working for an International Truck Dealership. My job was in their body shop as a helper. Rose and I first rented a mobile home in the country, and then later on bought our own mobile home in Murray, Ky., which is the next largest town to where we lived in the country. I loved living in Ky. There was so much activity that suited me, such as hunting and fishing. Since we lived aboiut 20 minutes from Ky. Lake and The Land Between The Lakes, and also activities such as dirtbike riding, tractor pulls, demolition derbys, truck pulls, and helping my friends with their tobacco crops. I spent a lot of time on Ky. Lake with a boat that I had bought, and spent a lot of time in The Land Between The Lakes, trail riding in our four wheel drive vehicles. In 1977 our daughter Nicky was born. That was the happiest day of my life. I was so proud of her. Then in 1983 after I had worked in the truck body shop and had learned a lot about trucks, Rose and I decided to open our own shop. We owned our own shop of repairing trucks and trailers for about 3 1/2 years. It was a lot of stress and took a lot of time, but I enjoyed the challenge of it, and the satisfaction of being a business owner, although Rose didnt like it that much. She was homesick for Michigan, and wanted us to move back there so she could be with her fanily members,whom all lived there. My brother Larry had already moved back to Michigan, and also my sister Sue lived there so I had some family there also.
So in 1989 we moved back to Michigan, by then Nicky was about 12 years old. I started working there in a truck repair shop since that is were I had the most experience. Then in 1991 Rose and I were divorced, that was the worst time in my life, but I have overcome that now. I have worked in several truck body shops here in Michigan until I started having problems with my back due to all the heavy lifting on the trucks. Everything about the big rigs is big and heavy and hard work. When I started having back problems I decided to change my career to cars since everything on cars is small and light. That made a world of difference. Since I was working on cars I went to a lot of classes on the new technologies of cars and proper repairs set by the manufacturer, and I got a lot of certifications from organizations and also from the State. Rose and I sold our house that we bought when we moved to Michigan, and I have since bought another house where I now live. I live by myself now and I love it, but i will admit it took a long time to get used to living by myself.
My daughter continued school here in Michigan when we first moved here from Ky. It was hard for her to do that, but she soon made new friends and started enjoying school again. She graduated in 1995, and started going to a nearby college. She took classes for several years. She worked and took night and Saturday classes to further her education. She now is a receptionist in a dentist office. We had a big wedding for her in Aug. 2003. Her Mom and I both shared the cost,eventhough Nicky and her Husband footed most of the expense.
I am retired now and spend a lot of time on my computer, mostly early in the mornings. And I have an old friend that I got in touch with last year. She is a high school sweetheart. We connected on the computer by accident. Since then we have shared our lives with one another, eventhough she lives in a different state, without her help I could have never launched this website. She is a very dear friend. And also I try to stay busy with my house and property. I live on about 4 1/2 acres and it keeps me busy in the summer taking care of my yard, which is about half the property. I also spend some time with my brother Larry and my sister Sue, and her husband Louie. I go down south as often as I can to visit the rest of my family. I have four sisters that live there, and they have families of their own. My mother also lives down south near my four sisters. So all combined there is a lot of family living down south in Va. so I try to visit as often as I can,{mostly holidays}. That keeps me busy when I am down in Va. It takes me about one week to get to all my family to visit, and by then it is time for me to go back to my house in Mi.
Well thats it for now hope I didnt bore you too much.
