I am not sure how to get started on this act of writing memoirs for I was never one for putting words on paper. It eludes my mind and defied my scarce and nifty imagination how those writers did with finesse in weaving and knitting words with ease and came out with blockbusters. With all these in my mind, I am also a striving Poet and writing poetries in my spare time...and Pottery.
I was born in the silent night of December 3, 1951.
My father was a small town cop and mother (both deceased) a seamstress. Our big family was cloistered in our small house... it looked like a motley crew of elves and imps (we were 11) speaking a common language of poverty. With a meager salary of a small town cop, our existence was a paradigm of hand-to-mouth ritual. It was real hard for my parents to make both ends meet... and hunger, the paramour of poverty, always found a way to sneak into our house. Food was scarce and hardly was there any meat on the table.
The house undertook a spirited daily effort to fortify our financial inadequacy but in spite of our pooled resources the coffer was always empty.
I started at a young age to pound the hammer on my dream and sparks flew in every direction as I hit the head of a stubborn ambition. It was a man's world I entered too soon when I worked in construction sites as a peon. It was a low paying job but I prided myself in it and placed so much value in my work... a value placed on a single human life- dignity. I looked for jobs and grabbed it as it came. Life was hard for me with its ugliest demeanor and adversities.
I finished high school in 1968 and our aging father had explicitly told us that anyone of us interested to go through college was on his own.
I entered college as a working student (a school janitor) and classes for me started at 3pm to 8pm. I had a tight schedule between work and study and my time became a precious commodity I appropriated to accommodate my activities without compromising the other. A college degree was all I ever wanted then and I was bent on pursuing it at all costs.
P. S. As a working student, took me five years to finish my four-year course in Agriculture.