“My birthday was Friday and I turned 48. If I am not working, I am spending time with family. It is hard trying to get honest money. It is easier to get it the other way, but that is the chance you take. I have been in the penitentiary five times. Not for doing harm, but trying to provide and survive. I have seven kids, six girls and one boy. Most of them in different states. I am no murderer, but I do have kids. All of them are grown but the last two. The first five kids I was in and out of prison or in and out of the home, the last two I am trying to stay in the home with them. Being away for two to three years or six months or nine months makes a difference when you are away from your family. I know what to do to get money, I just can’t do it that way anymore. Get comfortable with your family and they go back into prison again. Once you get out, it is hard to take the right avenue and get work. I wish I had gone into the military. I wasn’t a trouble guy. I was an athlete and an A-B and B-C student. There was a club across the street from my porch. It was open 24/7 and everything was right there in front of me, including drugs. When I was 9-years-old, while kids were watching cartoons, I went out to see how much money I could find. At 10-years-old I was selling gum and chips in school. Trying to make it on my own and survive. My mom had it hard. She was a barmaid in a night club, then got a 9 to 5 job. I had no father figure. The people out there were my father figure and education. Guys with a pimp hat, jewelry, suit, big hats and cars and lots of money. On weekends I would make hundreds of dollars. At the same time, I was cutting grass. I was the only boy in my family and trying to step up, or called it that. My mom didn’t approve of it and that made us have a bad relationship because my father had been into it too. She doesn’t like me because ‘You are just like your daddy.’ He wasn’t at home with his family either. That is how I lost my first five. I had some good moments with them and still talk with them, but I am doing more with my last two. I have had a good life, I wouldn’t change it. The things I have seen and learned and the people I have met. But I wish I would have done something else. I just want to be comfortable with my family with a roof over our head and they don’t want for anything.”