I was born in rural Kentucky and we were very poor, I did not get a pair of shoes until I was 9 and I only got a new pair every few years and because of this my toes are curled from the undersized shoes.

At age 13 my family moved to the city, Louisville to be precise. We were deep in the ghetto and everybody was very angry and to survive you had to be angry too. So all my friends did drugs and robbed people so I did too. I was a criminal down the wrong path. Eventually I had to leave town for because of this criminality and I went west.

At age 20 I had left Louisville and an awful enviroment, I decided to get a job fighting forest fires because I heard the money was good, during this I realized the fruits of hard work and the satisfaction of being worth something. Suddenly people treated me like a hero, they didn't change sides of the street when they saw me like I was used to in Louisville. So I became hooked on hard work and bettering myself and started to learn a trade. I stopped doing drugs and stopped being a piece of shit.

Now I am an electrician with a wife and kids and I teach them every single day about hard work and respect because I grew up with neither.

The moral of the story is if you're in a bad enviroment you may not know it you're just trying to survive, but as soon as you get a chance to be a better person and you take it, you will be amazed at how positive life can be. America was built on people that didn't give up.