PRISONER EXPRESS

I was born to a young mother of 19 years and to a father who had fought in the Vietnam War. Things were good; jobs were available to as many people as could hold them, the Dolphins made it to the Superbowl, and oh- that President I mentioned was on the brink of losing his job.

Shirley Modowney was tearing the body off everything that hit the drag strip. Ask Don Garletts, he was there. Also that year Chrysler came out with a new slap-stick transmission that came in stock in the Challenger of that year.

My father was a hard working man, son to a paratrooper of the 2nd World War and a trooper himself. He had a very strict work ethic; he believed that "Work set you free" and if men didn't work, then they surely did not deserve to eat.

We have a German background, a background that some are not so gleeful of, but what am I to fret? My family did not support that era, war, nor person conducting it. We were simple farm people that wanted nothing more but to live and let live. I never met my great-grandparents. Nor, for that fact, ever met my grandmother from that side of my family. I only know what I have been told and also shown.

My ancestry speaks in my actions, the way I think, and also the way I treat people. My grandparents were Luther separatists and since that separation took place, so did my immediate family from that venture of religion. We have evolved into God-fearing Fundamentalists.

I made a mistake in life and was incarcerated. The objective here is that I truly have learned my lesson and at any cost don't want it to be a reflection on my family or my upbringing. I had challenges as a youth and I suffered my fair share of downfalls and hang-ups. Lord knows I'm guilty of my share of pitfalls and ups and downs. I didn't ever think that by what I have done, that it really ever had or should have had the effect that it has had on my family. I am so sorry for the person I robbed and my family, who was robbed as well. I hope I have brought the reader of this story to somewhat of an understanding about me, the era I was born in, and the way I was brought up and reared.