The author moved to Virginia from Florida four years ago. He enjoys learning to read and write with his tutor.

With little education my life has not been easy. My parents broke up in 1940 when I was thirteen years old. I had three brothers and five sisters and I had to help take care of some of them. We were living in Alabama and were sharecroppers. We couldn't get ahead because we were working on someone else's property. I plowed from sunup to sundown and earned twenty-five cents for the twelve hours I worked.

There was no schooling provided for those that worked on farms. We would leave one farm and move to another one depending on what we made that year. Things got a little better as I grew older. We moved to Florida when I was sixteen and I earned four to five dollars a day. In 1946, I left home to work on a farm in Virginia during the summer months and sent money home to my mother.

In 1953, I began working for a chemical plant in Florida. It was the first time I had ever had a paid vacation.

Since that time, I began studying the Bible. I first learned the Bible by listening to tapes. I began learning to read in the 1970s, which has helped me. Even though I've had a problem with my reading; honesty, being a good worker, and good commonsense have helped me in keeping jobs. At age sixty-nine, I'm still working and trying to make ends meet. But all in all life seems to be working out for me.