The

The I was raised in West Texas, a trailer park by a single mom, and the rest is summed up by a couple of lines from a Merle Haggard song.

Dear old daddy, rest of soul, left my mom a heavy load. She tried so very hard to fill his shoes, working hours without rest, wanted me to have the best.

She tried to raise me right, but I refused. People said my daddy was wild, and I guess I sprung

from that same bad seed. But while my buddies were picking poisons like dope or booze or women,

I got hooked on something altogether different.

Adrenaline. I was a junkie for it ever since I stood up to my middle school bully.

He beat seven shades of crap out of me, but I landed the sweetest right hook right on his fat

face before he did, and afterwards I felt so good I could have strut sitting down.

He didn't bother me anymore after that, and I didn't see enough high school for anyone else to make the same mistake. But when I

heard my little cousin was being hassled at high school, I'd just about jumped at the chance to trim

some tail feathers, so to speak. And that, ladies and germs, was the first time I robbed anybody.

My freshman cousin had a toy cap gun shaped like a pearl handle revolver, and it was his pride and

joy, but I guess it was his own damn fault for taking a toy into high school because he got

it snatched off of him almost right away. He kept his trap shut about it for weeks,

so by the time I found out, there was no getting the cap gun back.

But when I found the bully, I made him empty his pockets.

I took his sneakers, and I even took the shirt off his damn back.

And that was an even bigger rush than stalking my bully in his fat pudgy face.

And I guess that was my career decider right there.

The way other kids see a Marine and his dress blues are a roughneck manhandling his rig and think,

damn, that's what I want to be when I grow up.

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