Walter just picked up your book (physical copy) on Amazon and then looked at your website and realized there is a ebook edition that you update (reminder check my parachute before I jump!) Is the physical book very far off of reality currently?

 

My 2017 eBook revision is currently being formatted by Jim Cockrum's PAC support team and should be released soon. I will post on my AMA when it is available for free download by all who have purchased a previous edition. If you don't get an automatic notification of the availability by then, please let me know.

Walter

 

Early difficulties can bring on rapid maturity or total rejection of responsibility. I omitted a lot of the difficulties from my early years because I didn’t want to appear to be plucking at my readers’ heart strings. Your comments have alerted me to the fact that to tell more of the story could prove motivational for some, so here is the….

Second Installment: I will start at the age of 5, when, after my older sisters had all married young, I was left to be mother and father to my baby sister. This was due to the long hours my mother worked.

Most children started school at the age of 5 but my entry was delayed for a year. My little sister was only 18 months old and because of the messed up family life she had not been toilet trained well enough to be reliable when sleeping.

My mother persuaded the kindergarten manager to break the rules and allow me to take my infant sister to Kinder with me, and promised that she would be “invisible”. I was completely responsible for her, starting with taking her on the tram the couple of miles to the kindergarten, and getting safely across one of the busiest city roads, with no pedestrian crossing or traffic lights.

I carried a diaper bag and after lunch, when all the children rolled out a coir mat on which to have a sleep, I rolled out two. I then put a diaper on her, not a disposable which didn’t exist then, but one of the big cloth ones secured with a giant safety pin.

After patting her off to sleep I lay down for a sleep too.

When Kindergarten closed for the day, I took her home and kept her amused until it was time to start cooking the food prepared by my mother before she left much earlier in the morning. Mother arrived home not long after that time and after a couple of hours at home left for her night-time job washing dishes.

That job explained why she so frequently said, when there was obviously not enough food for the three of us, that she was not hungry. I discovered later that she had warded off hunger by eating the scraps at the restaurant.

I cared for my sister until she was old enough to look after herself. After all these years we still have a close bond.

Educated in Hospital. My chronic illness saw me spend endless times in hospital without visitors except on Sundays when my mother and sister would visit. Being an avid reader I requested books to read, and the nurses soon discovered that the children’s books didn’t interest me.

One kind nurse brought me the first volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica from the teaching hospital’s library because it had lots of nice pictures. Forget the pictures – I wanted the facts and I devoured the whole volume and was soon reading volume 2.

During several prolonged stays in the hospital I read the entire encyclopaedia from beginning to end.

Thus I got an education that more than made up for the months that I missed going to school. That has kept me in good stead all of my life. It’s why the gang (see below) called me “The Professor.”

Gang Leader at Age 12. I suppose I left this part out partly due to shame, but I include it now to show that no matter where you have been in life you can break free and make something of yourself.

The defeat of the local bully as described in the first part of the thread led to me becoming the smallest ever street gang leader. It was not a violent gang. Petty crime was the specialty, with the big enterprise being the lightening of the loads on trucks labouring their way up an extremely steep hill.

They were a disorganised rabble, and the raids on the trucks were likely to result in police suddenly appearing, so I fixed that problem. I arranged for lookouts at the top and bottom of the hill. This was only possible because I got them all to agree to equal shares of the spoil.

We would lie in ambush behind parked cars, and pounce as the truck began the steep ascent in low gear. As I was so light weight, two would throw me up on to the truck and I then quickly opened boxes and threw the contents down to the gang.

I jumped down as we approach the top, and we melted into the surroundings – laneways, burnt out buildings etc. Once the coast was clear we would gather in a prearranged spot to divide the spoils as equally as possible. I had also persuaded them that for us the most valuable commodity was food, so our targets mostly became trucks carrying fruit and vegetables to the local markets.

Resentment From The Oldest Boy. Although he was always more or less an outsider, one boy who was really a young adult, moved with envy decided to take over, but he was not brave enough to fight someone half his size. I was about 15 at the time.

One night I crossed the street to the street lamp where we met every night and strangely, nobody else turned up. I waited for a while, but soon decided to go home and do some homework for once. As I took a step off the very narrow sidewalk a shot rang out and the bullet dug a hole in the wall behind my head.

I knew he had the only firearm in the area; a single shot .22 rifle. I had a lot of hunting experience with single shot rifles and knew how long it took to reload and aim accurately so I made the decision to walk back across the street rather than run.

I looked cool, calm and collected, but inside I was scared. The walk was just for show, but it had the desired effect. The spectators peering through their windows couldn’t see my knees knocking together. He had warned them off and demanded their silence on pain of death.

The outcome was that I was a hero and my enemy was a failure. He was effectively banished and left the district.

Continued Hustling. I tried everything I could find to make some money. The most successful was competing for prizes on teenage radio shows; mostly reading advertisements. I won cash, and sometimes goods that were quite valuable.

The best prize was a casual job as a disk jockey on Sunday, where I was paid more money than I had seen in my whole life to that point.

Summary. My motto in life has always been “Never Give Up.” I worked hard from an early age mainly because I had to, but I was always looking for opportunities.

I don’t know who first said it, but “Problems are opportunities looking for a solution.” By finding those problems and solving them I changed from the sidewalk to the Fastlane.

Probably the best advice I can offer anyone is to see problems in that light. Problems can give you the opportunity to fill a NEED. Learn to find problems outside your own little world.

Walter

 

I just can't even picture this situation. I am shocked beyond belief.

Thanks for the powerful addition to your story in this post.

 

Wow.

 

I've noticed the same thing, and it's often extreme on both ends.

Thank you for sharing your story, Walter.

I'm impressed with how you overcame your hardships, became a success and are now giving back.