I was born to Richard C. and Helen E. Winters in the year 1944. I grew up on the farm and moved from place to place. We were poor, poor enough that I can distinctly remember eating cornbread and water. I am not complaining. I look back on my childhood with very happy memories. My mother was a hardworking and loving mom and wife to my father. My father was just an old hillbilly from the hills of Missouri. Our life was fun as children, playing ball and rolling old car tires for our cars as we ran and romped all over the farm. I loved the old TV shows like Rawhide and Wagon Train. One of my favorite actors is Clint Eastwood. The Old West was what I loved as a kid. My children laugh as I tell them how I walked to school in the snow and walked home at noon for that cornbread and water. We lived around the area of central Missouri as I was growing up. I remember being a hunter as a young boy-we hunted to eat, not for sport. I left school after the eighth grade and started working. My first job was unloading trucks of grain at an old feed mill in the little town of Olean, Missouri. Then I graduated to a family who let me live with them and work for a small amount each week. The Shaw family is the people who gave me my first real job. I want to especially remember Linda Shaw; she was like a sister to me, and happily, I must say, after some fifty-five years, we have found each other again. I went from there to being a hot tar roofer, working for Bunch Roofing in Eldon, Missouri. My two brothers and myself worked together to help our parents out. We made some $120 per week-that was all three of our wages together. I was a wild kid at eighteen, drinking a lot, but always working. I never got into any trouble with the law my entire life. I married my first wife at nineteen; I was married for three years and then divorced. I went into the army at twenty-two during the Vietnam War. I did basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I was sent to Fort Ord, California, for AIT and spent the rest of my time in California. Met my wife in Seaside, California, and was married in Carson City, Nevada. We have four children, David, Ronald, Elizabeth, and Jason, and also ten grandchildren, whom we adore. We have had a wonderful and blessed life, good health, and close family. I have out six other books. I enjoy writing and hope my writing is enjoyed by all who read it. Thanks to everyone who reads and buys this book. May God bless you always. I have gone through prostate cancer and am a survivor. I am now enjoying with my grandchildren and children as I start to cut back some and make writing my employer of choice.
