1     My Granny’s House, Ridgeland, Mississippi

I was born on December 6, 1967, in Ridgeland, MS. My parents, my two brothers, and I lived in this little old white house just off Highway 51 North. Just a small town where people knew each other. Going through Ridgeland, there were no red lights, just stop signs. One grocery store, Piggly Wiggly. A few gas stations, and a lot of cottonfields on the outskirts of town. Just a two-lane highway, north into Madison, south into Jackson.

We lived within walking distance from my Granny’s house, an old bitty white house on a hill. I love my Granny! (my dad’s mother), and I miss her so much. A pioneer woman with eight kids of her own, and lots of grandkids, Granny knew how to provide for us all. And she did just that. She’s the main one who taught me how to cook, as I got older in my teens. She even showed me how to make homemade buttermilk biscuits. Yum, yum. The best…

Every Sunday, Granny was in the kitchen cooking a big meal for the whole family. Whoever showed up after church—my aunts and uncles with my cousins—we would enjoy a good old country meal that day. My grandfather had passed away in 1966, before I was born, so that was our family back then.

As a child, I can remember these two huge historic-looking pecan trees in Granny’s front yard. They would produce pecans in the fall, bigger than your finger. I mean big ones, too! We would fill lots of brown paper bags with those pecans, and Granny made the best pecan pie in the world. Yes, Granny taught me how to make that, too.

My life changed in 1978, when I was eleven years old. My parents got a divorce. My dad had been cheating on my mom, and it turns out he had done that a lot. Even before I was born. But my life had already changed when I was nine years old. Something happened to me, but nobody knew. Anyway, my parents split up. Mama moved to South Jackson, daddy moved to Pearl, MS. I followed my dad to Pearl. He got married again. Now, there’s a stepmother. My brothers and I did not like her at all. She was this mean, hateful, ugly, beady-eyed bitch from Alabama. Daddy always took up for her, and he was pushing his kids away from him, but he didn’t care.

So I went back to live with my mama and her father in South Jackson. We were a family divided. I loved my grandfather, we called him Paul. I was close to him. He loved to cook, also, yes, he would show me how to cook his way, too. Paul would read his Bible to me a lot, take me grocery shopping, show me how to pick out fresh fruits and vegetables. But life was going to change for me again.

One day in late November, 1980, when I was twelve years old, Paul and I were heading to the farmers’ market in Hazlehurst. We never made it. Driving south on Hwy 55, Paul had a massive heart attack. I had to grab the steering wheel, pull the car over to the side of the road, and turn it off. I jumped out and waved for help, and a lot of people stopped to help. Well, three days later, on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1980, my grandfather died. I was crushed.

 

2     My Troubled Life

The following year, 1981, I went to Whitten Junior High in Jackson, Mississippi. It was there in the seventh grade that I met my very first girlfriend. He name was Sherry. She was African American, and the first girl I had sex with—backstage at school, in the auditorium, on the piano as a matter of fact. And nobody knew! It just happened, and I’ll never forget that moment. Before school was out for the summer, mama moved to Pearl. I didn’t want to leave Sherry, my first love, but I had to. So the following year, in wintertime, I went swimming at my apartment complex and met a white girl, Cindy. She and I got caught by her mother having sex in the pool. I got in so much trouble that mama made me go back to live with my father and the bitch. I hated that, too. So now I’m back at my dad’s, my stepmother already had a daughter before they got married. Dana, who was one year old at the time, had become my stepsister. Soon my dad and stepmother had a son, Chad—my youngest brother now.

So all this time, even before I was born, my dad was an alcoholic. He loved to get drunk. He was already a mean bastard, and he stayed drunk all the time. Every day after work he would drink Budweisers, sometimes switching to Seagram’s 7. It was then, when I was about fifteen years old, that I started remembering something that had happened to me when I was nine, something nobody knew about. Also by this time I was smoking weed, doing drugs like cocaine and rush, and sneaking out at night with some of daddy’s beers. I was a young teenager who needed HELP. A counselor! Never did I get that, daddy was too drunk to see, and I hid my hurt from my mama. I didn’t know any better. So I stayed in trouble a lot, always getting my ass whipped by my daddy. And I hated my stepmother. I was hurting on the inside, broken in spirit, but nobody could see. Only me.

Sometimes when I got in trouble for something, I would sneak out of the house late at night and go to this old tire shack out back. I would take one of daddy’s beers with me and drink it. I spent a lot of nights crying in that shack. Soon daddy would realize some of his beers were coming up short. He started counting them. I also started smoking cigarettes, sneaking them from my stepmother’s pack. She never knew that, but daddy realized I was drinking his beers and he put a stop to that. So I started hating my dad. He could keep his damn beer, I would still sneak out at night just to get away.

Sometimes my older brother, Wendell, would come to stay the weekend with us and we would sneak out together. Daddy lived beside this 18-wheeler company in Pearl, and Wendell and I would jump on these flatbed trailers parked beside each other. We would crank up tractors and drive around the yard in back of the company. Nobody knew it. One night we took two pickup trucks with CB’s in them, and went driving around Pearl, talking to each other on the CB’s. It was fun! Until he got caught. I made it back home, but he didn’t. Pearl PD had pulled him over. We were teenagers, so daddy had to go get Wendell from the police station in the middle of the night. We both got our asses whipped. Wendell had to go live with my aunt (daddy’s sister) in Madison, MS. I had to stay with my dad. Things didn’t get any better for me. By now I was in the 8th grade at Pearl Junior High. I got in trouble at school and got kicked out of the 8th grade for bringing some powdered sugar to school and pretending it was cocaine. (Funny, huh?) I got told on and they expelled me. Yes, I had to repeat the 8th grade. And I was still hurting inside.

I think my daddy started realizing his neglecting me was catching up to him. He began to spend time with me, my two brothers, and some of my cousins as well. He would take us hunting in the winter, fishing and camping during the summer. It was then that I learned how to catch catfish at night on a trout line. This was something I loved doing with my dad, along with deer hunting. We would use spot lights at night on the river in the boat going to check our lines for catfish. It was so much fun, avoiding the alligators, snakes, and bugs. I started to love my daddy for this. He would even teach me how to repair Chevy motors, working on just about any vehicle of all models that needed fixing. I was the mechanic out of the bunch.

We had our good times. Daddy taught me how to drive a vehicle, operate farm tractors, grow a garden, do woodwork of any kind, all things a daddy should teach his son in this world. Just not how to read the Bible, about God or Jesus Christ. Daddy wouldn’t stop drinking his beer for that, or take me to church. Mama did that for me, on the short times I lived with her.

So now I was eighteen years old, in the 9th grade at Pearl High School, still living with my dad. He was drinking more and more. And I was putting up with his abuse again; it just got worse. I failed the 9th grade that year, so I didn’t go back. I quit high school, got a job, and moved out on my own. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t deal with him staying drunk all the time, passing out in his chair, and being a sorry mean hateful asshole. I loved him but I hated his drinking.

Now at that time, mama moved to Gulfport, MS. I had a job as a security guard. When I turned twenty-one, I was able to carry a pistol when I worked. I moved up to become a dispatcher for Day Detectives Security Company in Jackson, and a year later I became a patrolman. (Some people would call us rent-a-cops.) I patrolled around Jackson at night, checking accounts for customers who needed our alarm service and protection. When an alarm went off I would drive my patrol car to that location, along with JPD (Jackson Police Department), and check on the alarm. I loved this job. I started wanting to become a police officer. And now I wish that dream would have come true, but it didn’t. I was smoking weed a lot at home, and drinking beer, too.

I met a woman named Betty. She took my place as a dispatcher when I became a patrolman for Day Detectives. She was a beautiful blonde with blue eyes. She was so fine! I was 22 years old, she was 44 years old, and we fell head over heels for each other. The only thing was, she was married. He husband was just like my daddy, drank beer all the time, and was mean to her. She suffered a lot of abuse from him. He owned his company, had lots of money, but worked out of town a lot. He was cheating on her, fighting with her when he was home on the weekends. Another sorry bastard. She didn’t love him, just needed his money for support, and they had three kids. Betty was the best thing that ever happened to me. She was a kind, loving mother and a girlfriend. She loved being with me because I loved her and treated her like a lady. We dated for two years, and her husband never knew anything. She would spend his money on me, buying me anything I needed. Anything, even my weed. Anything for my home that I needed, brand new, too. A new bed, dresser, couch, TV, VCR, entertainment center, dishes, you name it. She had the money to do it.

One day we opened up to each other, telling our deepest secrets. She could tell that something had been bothering me. She knew I had this hurt inside of me, and I needed to bring it out. So I did. I felt comfortable with her and told her about the hate that was inside of me. This gets personal, okay? I told her about my parents’ splitting up, how my dad was drinking all the time, how he was abusive to me, how I hated my stepmother and why. But there was something else.

When I was nine years old and living in Sumner, MS, I was sexually assaulted by this African American man. He did this a lot, and he made me cry each time. He told me not to say a word to anybody, and I didn’t. I was just a kid. Later, when I became a teenager, I started remembering what had happened to me. And because of this, and not getting any counseling, it started bothering me. I had a lot of hate inside of me by this time in my life. I felt very ashamed of myself. My daddy didn’t help matters because he was drinking all the time and very hateful toward me. I kept getting into trouble, getting whippings, hauling out a lot, so I kept this to myself. It’s the main reason I smoked weed a lot, later in life.

Like I said, Betty was the best thing that had ever come into my life. She was a good-hearted, loving woman. So I finally got the counseling I needed, just not by a counselor, but by my girlfriend, the older woman who knew how to be a counselor. Betty had three kids of her own and I guess that’s how she could see through me and understand my pain. She helped me realize that you can’t hate people for what they do to you, and that I needed to let go of the past. But you never get over any abuse in your life, you just find ways to get beyond it. Betty had been dealing with a husband she didn’t love, he was an alcoholic, and when he was home, they would fight a lot. Plus, she had breast cancer. I was crushed over this. I really loved her.

Eventually, Betty moved back home to be with her own family and to deal with her cancer. This was so hard for me. The woman I had grown to love was dying, and we couldn’t be together. I had to find a way to move on with my life. I started drinking and using drugs even more.

A few years went by and I got another job at the airport in Pearl. I always wanted to fly airplanes and I loved aviation work, so I was a ground handler and fueler for the International Airport.in 1992, I transferred to Gulfport, working for U.S. Aviation, and became a contract fueler for the military. The Air National Guard and the Army National Guard bases were next to the private planes that I fueled. And we put fuel in everything that flies in the sky down there! I had a good job, good friends, and I was learning how to fly an airplane. Also, I was a photographer, taking pictures of everything. I had my picture taken with any celebrity who would come to the MS Gulf Coast for any event—country singers, rock-n-roll singers, WWE wrestlers, NASA astronauts, and a lot of people connected with military fighter jets. This was by far the best job in the world! I was on top of my game. I had everything but God in my life. And a good woman.

In 1997, my best friend killed himself one night after he dropped me off from partying at the casinos. We were drunk, and he got a DUI. My friend (Jeff) also worked with me at the airport. We were close, and now he was dead. My only true friend at the time. So I kept drinking, using drugs, going to bars, not caring anymore. It was at a country bar that I met a girl. We had sex that night, and I didn’t see her again.

The following year, in 1998, my youngest brother, Chad, was killed while working. He got run over by an 18-wheeler. He was eighteen. Chad and I were close, growing up as brothers. His death was hard on my family and me. That was in March. Later that summer, I found out I had a son, Devon, and he was six months old. And I didn’t even know it. The girl I had sex with from that country bar got pregnant. This wasn’t the way I wanted a child in my life, so I told her to leave me alone.

I was smoking weed heavy by this time and had an accident at work one night. I didn’t have a spotter to help me, and I backed an airplane into another one in the hangar. That cost me my job at the airport. My world was devastated, and I turned to cocaine instead of God. Mama put me on the street because of my drug use and I became homeless, and lost almost everything in my life. In 2002, I got into a rehab in North Jackson and got clean until I relapsed in the summer of 2004. Then my daddy died two weeks later, in September of 2004, after I entered the same rehab center for help. My daddy had lots of money then, and he didn’t leave me a damn penny when he died. I was more heartbroken than crushed. And I hated him for not helping me. He had been an alcoholic all his life, and that’s all he cared about.

The best thing that happened to me is, I was at this rehab, a Christian base ministry, Friends of Alcoholics in North Jackson. It was then that I turned my life over to the Lord. I got saved for the first time in my life. Then I got baptized, and later in 2005, I became a staff member at God’s Ministry. I was finally free and happy.

My son would come spend the summer with me at F.O.A. In 2009 I decided to get a job so he could come and live with me. So I moved to Rankin County. God blessed me with a good job, a home, my own truck. But in May of 2009, my two brothers had a wreck in Gulfport, and my younger brother died. Now I have one brother still living. This was really hard on me, too.

The next year, my son came to live with me. Everything was going well, I was a Produce Manager for Kroger, making good money, had a home, and my son. But in 2013 I started taking pain pills for my back. Later, I got hooked on them and was smoking weed and drinking a lot of moonshine. Again I took my eyes off the Lord and started messing up. I met this 24-year-old girl and dated her. Pushing my son away, I was spending all my time with her. In 2015, I got shot in the stomach over in Jackson. I almost died that night, but God saved me. So I didn’t see her anymore.

In 2016, I lost my job at Kroger when I got into an argument with another manager. By this time, my son was back living with his mother. And once again I lost everything. In 2017, I got hired on at the airport in Madison, fueling airplanes again. Things were looking up for me. Then I made a mistake and got fired in January 2018. I had to go back to Friends of Alcoholics (F.O.A.), this time because I was homeless, jobless, lost and very depressed. So I went back to rehab. I stayed almost a year, then left again. This time I found two jobs, Chevron and Shell gas stations, as a cashier, working in Glückstadt and Madison. I found a trailer for rent, met this girl at Chevron, and fell in love. Everything was going good until I started smoking crystal meth with her. Drugs have always been my problem, and not having Jesus in control of my life!

Then, 2020, the pandemic hit. I got laid off, lost my trailer, moved in with my girlfriend, and got hooked real bad on crystal meth. We both did. In 2021, my nephew died and I wasn’t there for my brother, mother, or my family. I was a drug addict who needed help. The drugs had control of my life, not me. And this girl, I was in love. I was so stupid!

.           .           .

But you know, God rescued me once again. He never gave up on me. My family did, but God did not. This is why I say, God is Love. He took everything from me this time, everything. Brought me to my knees and woke me up. He found me. Coming to prison was the best things that could have happened to me, because I found the Lord Jesus Christ again. Amen!

Now I am clean and sober, for 2 ½ years. God rescued me. And that is a blessing. I have given my life back to the Lord. He is working on me every day. I was lost, but now I am found. I carry my Bible with me everywhere now, studying His word and applying it to my life.

Now, I have a testimony to give. I want to help others find Jesus, and not make the mistakes I made that got me in prison. Thank you, Jesus.