Deep South

You know as a kid the difference between South Carolina and Florida isn't what it is as an adult. As a young kid you just drive someplace different and it isn't where you used to be. But, you do pick up on lots of other things that maybe adults don't. For instance, when we arrived in SC we lived in a small trailer out in the country. We had this huge soybean and cotton fields in our front yard and big hog pens behind us. Now that may not seem that much different than Florida, but when you are used to endless beaches and a bunch of NASA types running around, well let's just say farmer/sharecropper kind of folk are in two different worlds. But, oh what fun they can be.

My mother particuarly hated the soybean field in our front yard because I would come home from the school bus stop about a mile away with tons of prickly burs on my clothes. Not to mention the mud and junk I would pick up from playing near the hog pens! She did like that I made friends easily and before I new it, I had a new best friend who lived on a farm down the road. He taught me the fine art of BB wars. Yes, it is a classic battle between two young people with thick coats on and a couple of red rider BB guns. Mom didn't know about this....so let's keep that on the down low. Although, I was nearly busted one day when I came home with welts on my hands and neck where I had been hit. Mom thought I was coming down with the chicken pocks. I had to stay in bed for a whole day before she thought I was cured.

We eventually moved a few years later to a nicer trailer park area behind an Air Force Base in town. That was awesome to me because I could watch all these jet fighters coming in for landing and taking off. Mom said to be an astronaut you have to be a pilot first. Boy was I in the right place now!