The next few weeks were tough, I decided to start my own business, a food brokerage business. I had contacts in the food industry and I had been in the food and beverage industry all of my life. From the first time I had a job in the grocery store when I was fourteen I always wanted to own my own business. I made some contacts and one of the people that I had known for years put me in touch with another man that had been in this kind of business and was doing well. We hit it off and I had a little income to live on. This wasn’t easy for Darlene as she was in charge of the bills. She had always been great with numbers and I was not the best at handling and paying the bills. I was best at selling and that was what I was going to do. It was very hard to get this business going we had a couple of customers and we decided to team up with a few other fellows over in Indiana.
Cut throat is what this all came to and before I knew it I dropped my partner as was suggested by the Indiana boys. They wanted me for themselves and I wasn’t going to let that happen either. Now I was lost. What had I done? I left a company that I had been with for twelve years just because of some pressure? I had to think, then it started looking better I got hooked up with a company that supplied eggs and noodles and another company that produced a chili for hot dogs and a couple other related items. So now on my own totally I was in business. I met with old boss from the meat company that I had been with and he was heading up another company in the meat business. They were interested in me selling their products in Kentucky. This was going to be a home run for me! I just need to come up with the logistics of getting the products distributed. This was going to be new for me so my contact wanted me to get in touch with a fellow in Indiana. Small world, the person was the ring leader of the cut throats. I wasn’t going to have any part of it.
In the next days to come I tried to convince my old boss that I could handle it. Then on this day in September of 2001 a tragic thing happened to our country, we were attacked and the Twin Towers fell. After that day my business fell too. Every one was pulling back on the purse strings, I failed.
The employment center was located in downtown Louisville and the lines were long. Everyday I continued to look for work. I was on the internet looking at all of the job sites. Nothing, I began to believe that looking for jobs on the internet was a joke. I lot of the jobs that I was qualified for wanted the applicant to have some kind of degree. I had no degree, I was what was known as a mustang. Mustangs were people that always start at the bottom of a company and through using there God given skills rose to as far as the could rise. This had always been me, the Marines, the soft drink company and the meat company. This was the definition of my life.
