When I graduated from Lamar University in May 1972, I was no longer the young man who had first arrived there and flunked out. I also wasn't alone. I had a wife, Cece, and our first child, Ben. After graduation, Cece and I moved back to Lake Jackson, Texas, the place where I had finished growing up. I already had a job lined up, but it wasn't quite ready for me to start. As it happened, Dow Chemical was experiencing a strike. I had worked at Dow before returning to college, so while I waited for my new position to begin, I went back to work there temporarily as a salaried employee during the strike.
The strike was relatively short. Then the job I had been waiting for began. And I entered a world I knew very little about.
Seven Prisons
I became a counselor for prison inmates. My responsibilities went beyond working in a single institution. I served as a liaison for the State of Texas to seven southern prisons in Brazoria and Fort Bend Counties. It was a long way from anything I had imagined doing when I was a boy at Lohn. I had grown up around farmers, ranchers, teachers, storekeepers, and musicians. Now I was dealing with inmates and the prison system. The work introduced me to people whose lives had taken very different turns from mine.
My own failures had taught me something about second chances.
Not everyone I encountered in the prison system had made the same kinds of mistakes I had made, and the consequences were certainly not the same. But I had learned enough about life by then to know that a person cannot always be understood by looking only at the worst chapter of his story.
Our Little House
Cece and I bought a small house in Lake Jackson. For about three years, that was home. Cece was there. Ben was there. And I was trying to build a career and support my family. There was something satisfying about owning that little house. I had begun life in a sharecropper's family on someone else's land. Now I had a wife, a son, a college degree, a job, and a house of my own. From the outside, it probably looked as though I had arrived.
But there was a problem. The numbers didn't work very well.
Back to the Clubs
Working for the State of Texas did not pay enough for the life we were trying to build. So, I returned to something that had helped me earn money before. Music. I began singing in clubs again to supplement my salary and make ends meet. During the day, I worked for the State of Texas. At night, when necessary, I became a musician again. I was again combining daytime work with music at night, this time as a husband and father trying to pay the bills.
Eventually, I came to another conclusion. The State of Texas job might provide employment. But for me, it looked like a dead end. I wanted somewhere to go. So, I started looking.