Mine do pretty well too. They went off to college. When they did, it was
good they knew how to do. They learned a lot. I'm sure they were glad
they learned what they learned. A unique thing, I'll pop this out. I
don't mean this as a brag or anything like that, but both my boys, I
think I was working in South Carolina near Columbia when my wife got
pregnant with my first son. I had just gotten out of Mars Hill here and
I landed a job. And landed a job and I never will forget, I was planning
on going one more year of college and a company, Milliken and Company,
came in and interviewed. One of my professors asked me if I wanted to
interview with them. I told him, 'Not really because I wasn't planning
on getting out of school. So I wasn't looking for a job right now.' I
funded myself through school, paid all my schooling, roofed houses,
helped pay for that, drove trucks. But they came and interviewed me and
offered me a job. So I went to two semesters of summer school to get out
of college early to go to work. Anyhow I moved down there, and my wife
got pregnant with my first son. When she got pregnant, I told her,
'Well, this is not where I want to live to raise children. I want to
come back here and I want to raise my boys—boy, I didn't know whether it
was a boy or a girl. I said, 'I want to raise my children here. This is
where I want to raise them, whatever it takes.' We did that and brought
them up here in his community, and I think
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instilled some moral values in them that are worth more than any money
we could've ever made. I look back on it now; I can do that now. It was
the best sacrifice we ever made. Both my boys did this. I was pleased. A
parent will be bad to brag he isn't careful. My oldest son has been off
at Carolina, Chapel Hill. He's getting ready to graduate. He's got one
more semester. He'd been there, starting on his second semester, I
guess. Old Madison County boy come and there he is. He wrote us a
letter. I saved the letter. Both of them did this. He wrote me a letter
and he said, 'I just want to thank you 'uns for the way you raised me.'
He explained what we did to him, and we had stuck together. Mom and Dad
loved each other, and we had been a family. I guess when he got down
there, and he saw kids that didn't go home when they had break and all
this stuff, I think it probably came home to him what was really
important. You can look back on that now as I'm sure. Boy, that's worth,
that's worth its weight in gold.