So we came back to Texas in summer of 1984, and my parents decided to build a house outside a small town called Liberty Hill. While the house was being built, we lived in our motorhome in my aunt Janet's back yard. It was ok I guess, but I hated Janet for all I was worth. I don't know what it was about her, but she just really pissed me off every time I saw her.

Pretty soon, our new house was ready to be moved into, and the next chapter of my life was beginning.

A year or two later, Mom had her 2nd heart attack, and that's when everything started going to shit. She was in the hospital for quite a while, and when she got out, things were never really the same again. Dad had been laid off from his job and so we didn't have any medical insurance for all the hospital bills, and we were basically the poorest of the poor people until finally we had our house repossessed in April 1988.

Things started looking a little better when we were able to find a repo house outside another small town called Florence. It wasn't much, and it was nasty and needed to be remodeled, but it was all we could afford. I consider this to be the place I grew up because all my significant memories were here.

The Lesters were our wealthy neighbors to the east, and the Handsels were the neighbors to0 the west. Wesley Handsel would pay me $4.00 an hour to do truly needless work just because he was a good man and wanted me to be able to have some spending money. The Lesters had a daughter named Nancy who I took a liking to. She wasn't worth the time it took to speak to her by my adult standards, but at the time, for a fat kid who was homeschooled all his life, she was the best thing going.