Chapter 1
My folks were rather poor and I was working to earn my own money before I turned sixteen. When I graduated from high school there was no thought of college of course. But I did want to get away so I joined the Army.
Believe me I was not the only one who was poor that signed up for the Army. There were many different reasons people joined whether they were poor or not but that was mostly my reason. Plus I did consider my self to be patriotic and I think I loved my country.
I found that Army life was not too bad. I made a few acquaintances if not really friends and would get moved and make a couple more at the new location. We were still fighting in Afghanistan and I did a few tours there and saw a small amount of action I guess. Mostly for me it was rather boring.
I did learn to fight though. Not so much from what the Army taught me but a few guys knew stuff and we would fool around and I did learn quite a lot from them. One guy was from New Orleans and he was amazing with a knife. He taught me and a couple other guys quite a lot.
I was over there when my folks died in a car accident on the highway. There was no drunk driver or anything. My folk’s car swerved across the median and hit a truck head on in the on-coming lane. My dad died at the scene but they took my mom to the hospital though she died the next day without ever regaining consciousness. The truck driver was fine and walked away from the crash. The county did an autopsy and said my dad probably died not from the crash but from a heart attack.
I never went back for the funeral. An Aunt took care of the arrangements. The house was sold along with the contents. There was a big hospital bill from them trying to save my mom and nothing they had was worth much and there was nothing left after the hospital bill and the funeral expenses.
I stayed in the Army until they pretty much closed down the Afghanistan operation. At that point I got out and came back to where I used to live near Atlanta. There was nothing there for me anymore but that was the only spot I had ever lived and that is why I returned there I guess. I got a very small apartment right on the edge of Atlanta and got a job as a clerk at a convenience store near the apartment.
Join the Army and learn a trade so you can get a real job, was the one of the ads for the Army. Well I guess I did get a real job but a graveyard shift clerk at gas station does not earn much money I can tell you.
I had a bunch of money saved up from when I was in the Army and I lived so frugal that I could even save a little bit from the crummy job I had now. I had no friends so that saved me a lot of money probably. I had never been a drinker so I did not waste any money at the bars like many people did and maybe more than a few veterans did too I think.
The job was crappy but it was a job and I did not know what I wanted to do with my life now that I was back in civilian life. I very briefly considered being a cop but that was not for me I knew. Neither was being a gas station clerk.
So I just put in my time and thought about what I should do. I could maybe go get some college now using my veteran’s benefits and that was a possibility but it just did not seem like what I wanted to do right this minute either.
I just did not know what to do and maybe that was fairly common I heard for guys when they got out of the military. I think I was adjusting fine being back in the states and I certainly wasn’t suicidal or anything like that. I guess there were many vets that just could not adjust and suicide rates were very high with vets. At least I heard that on the news.
I did listen to the news and would read the newspaper at work. It seems the whole world was a much screwed up place right now. It seemed many places in the world were just teetering on going to war. The Middle East was worse than ever right now and several countries there did not even have functioning governments anymore.
The Far East was a powder keg with China and several other countries fighting over some tiny un-inhabited islands in the middle of the China Sea for reasons known only to them. I would not think that would amount to anything but I looked like China was ready to go to all out war over that worthless land. I don’t know if all the islands together in that chain would have enough land for a couple of football fields.
The only thing I could think of was maybe there something under the sea there as there was certainly nothing there above it. Maybe oil.
Besides the Middle East and the China Sea being ready to start world war three there was Europe. Seems there was a lot of stuff going on in a country called Ukraine. A bunch of stuff happened in that country which resulted in the President being thrown out. A coup. And when they got the brand new President there was a lot of unrest to say the least. There was a full fledged civil war and in the middle of it Russia annexed an area known as Crimea which was apparently fine with the people that lived there but not with the new Ukraine government. So the USA put sanctions on Russia and the Ukraine civil war kept going and no one knows what will happen there next. It could be the spot that starts world war three. Who knows. And all this war stuff is happening at a time when basically every country is stone cold broke and has no money. Including the great United States.