It was Tuesday, May 19, 1930 when I came into this world at St. Louis, Missouri, during the Great Depression. All Quiet On The Western Front was the top movie that year while Body And Soul topped the music charts. Herbert Hoover was President, Blondie debuted in the funny papers and the Philadelphia Athletics beat the Cardinals in the World Series. As a military brat, I rode an army truck to a St. Louis school from Jefferson Barracks, and later attended Fort Knox elementary school. My father returned home after being wounded in World War II. I attended Herculaneum High School and played second base for the Herky Black Cats.

In due time I served six years in the army including a tour with the 8240th Army Unit, a special operations group involved in partisan guerilla missions during the Korean War. I then embarked on a law enforcement career with the U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Customs, the Inspector General's Office of USDA, and the Gwinnett County Police Department in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

Meanwhile, I was also a husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, little league coach and a poet. I became a regular contributing editor for Writers Rescue Magazine, a columnist for Sharing & Caring and a poetry columnist for the Gwinnett Herald, a local newspaper. I now write a column "Dear Bubba" for Oxford So and So, a quarterly magazine.

I didn't always want to be a writer. I remember an early fascination for ten-gallon cowboy hats, leather chaps, and pearl-handled six guns. Afterwards came a yearning to be a baseball player for the St. Louis Browns. It was a lofty ambition at the time - my hero was Chet Laabs (look him up). I considered the life of a soldier with a tin helmet, a uniform with shiny brass buttons and no one to mind if my face and hands got dirty. Later, of course, I was a super hero with my own homemade cape, leaping from the garage roof to apprehend imaginary bad guys.

My desire to write started at some point between first grade and long pants. Early childhood included an abundance of playtime with a bit of poetry here and there. My mother loved poems. She often read to me from a small book of verse. Its cover was tattered and frayed and some of the pages peeked out with bravery but she read aloud and I thrilled to the stories she told. I didn't know she was reading poetry because the words hardly ever rhymed and she seldom paused at line endings, continuing to read as if it was an adventure tale. My imagination stirred to hear her words together like that. Perhaps if I became a famous writer I could visit libraries and book fairs signing autographs for adoring fans. Beautiful young ladies would be captivated by my charm as I inscribed a personal memento to them. I would heartily shake hands with the old men while listening graciously as little old ladies shyly ask, "Do you think sex and violence are really necessary in a best-selling novel?" I would wink and observe their rosy blushes at my teasing reply. "Of course not but it does put the author in a favorable mood to write one."