After both of my parents went to jail, I moved in with Uncle Bobby.
He basically was a deranged aged man, however a superb hearted one.
He did his best to take care of me… The thing about Uncle Bobby was that he didn’t really know too much about youngsters. I was merely 12 at the time, and entirely superb at taking care of myself, so both of us ended up getting along especially well. When I was 14, he told me straight up that by age 18 I couldn’t go on without a good job. He had a plan to make me his apprentice for his custom built furniture business, and it seemed like an unbearable amount of work. In teaching me how to craft the finest hand made wooden tables and chairs, he wasn’t giving me all this money, he was giving me in essence a university education in woodcrafting. If I put in the time, then I could have all the skills to custom make high end furniture, a skill set extremely few people have these days. The two of us started relatively simple, with a pretty nice coffee table, because there were a lot of flat planes on it. Wooden chairs and table legs were honestly more challenging, however over time I started to get entirely superb at taking care of woodwork. Twenty years later, and I deal in oak furniture and cherry furniture depending on the actual season. Entirely true to his word, although he couldn’t send me to an official university, he gave me the best education. I make an excellent living with handmade furniture.