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Writer's pictureMichael Collins

My Younger Years

Updated: Sep 24, 2022


I wrote this so that I may not be completely forgotten and that my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will know who I was.

This is my personal story. One day many years ago and for some reason, I decided to make a list of questions, a survey if you will, so that I could ask people that would allow me to get to know them, not only better but also faster.

I answered the questions first by myself before asking anyone else to answer them. The only other person I recall answering these questions was my mother. I haven't found her answer document yet, but hope to run across it one day, because I don't throw anything away.


So, "This is me".

My Favorite Color is Blue.

When I was 14 years old, a friend and I took his Cushman Scooter squirrel hunting. He let me drive it on the way back home. Carrying two shotguns and several dead squirrels that were anxious to be fried and gravy to be made from, I rounded a curve, got caught up in some loose gravel on the side of the road, and slammed right into an extremely hard cement bridge abutment. I flew over the handlebars and sliced inside of my right leg about 12 inches long from the rear-view mirror that went down to the bone. I broke both the right tibia and fibula and crushed the growth plates in my right knee. I flew off the abutment on the opposite side of the road and then bounced into the creek below. My friend didn't suffer any injuries, but his scooter and our shotgun were wounded, and I didn't enjoy fried squirrel and squirrel gravy that evening. If you have never tried it, there is nothing much better than fried squirrel with gravy made from the squirrel grease in the cast iron skillet. After my first ambulance ride to the Greensburg memorial hospital, the next thing I remember was hearing the surgeons in the operating room discussing whether they should amputate my leg. Then I heard them say, "this is going to hurt a bit, as they inserted a long needle into the newly acquired bloody gap in my right leg. Probably the most pain I have ever felt was when the needle hit the bone in my leg. This pain is what I use to gauge, how to answer a doctor when they ask, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the worse, what is your pain level right now. After six months in the Riley Hospital for Children at the Indiana University of Health, followed by 6 months of physical rehab, I had to learn to walk again but this time with a cast that went from my toes to the top of my right thigh. When I was finally back in school, I learned how to navigate two sets of stairs to the classrooms on the 2d floor and then back down on crutches. Instead of playing dodgeball or basketball during gym class, I had to do several physical therapy exercises.

I loved Rock and Roll, after all, it was the 60's. In fact, I played in a Rock and Roll Band as a teenager…We called ourselves the Gold Medallions. And yes, we wore big gold medallions around our necks. I played Guitar and sang Beatles songs, songs by the Monkeys, and all that crazy stuff we listened to back then. My band and I competed in several Battle of the Bands which is a music contest and music competition in which two or more bands compete for the title of "best band". The winner was typically determined by a voice vote of the audience or the band that brought the most people to support them. Traditionally, battles of bands were held at live music events. We never won but always had a lot of fun. When I met the girl of my dreams, I learned to love Country Music and smoke cigarettes from her. She and one of her older sisters sang both country and country gospel music in perfect harmony. Both played the guitar. There is a story behind how we met, but I will save that for another time. Being in love, probably for the first time in my life, I found this kind of music had so much depth and feeling. Looking back, I suppose it’s because you can cry in your beer so much easier with it, and I seem to cry inside all the time. From Country music, I graduated to moonshine and bluegrass. These two seem to go together naturally. Later on, in life, my choice of music shifted to bluegrass gospel.

My favorite country singers are Tracy Lawrence and Tim McGraw.

There are four people that I look up to:

First, my deceased Uncle Harold. He was the United States Marine Corps Raider, who fought in many of the major South Pacific Battles during World War II and survived.

When he returned from the war he was characterized by the term, “being Shell Shocked”. shell shock was an intellectual forerunner to PTSD. His younger brothers would make loud noises and then laugh at him while he looked for a way to dig a fox hole. He was a tough guy, a real hell-raiser, and did his fair share of drinking. Later in life, he found the Lord and attended the Central Christian College of the Bible, a private school located in Moberly, MO. Upon completion, he returned to his home in New Point, Indiana where he and his wife Bonnie raised their family with a deep Christian background.

Second is my mother, who I could have treated and talked to much better when I was young and dumb. But now I watch her grow in mental strength after finally being out from under the abuse of my father.

Next is my oldest son, who strives to do more for me than I have ever done for anyone. He is the mirror image of me. He is left-handed and I am right-handed. His strengths are my weaknesses, his weaknesses are my strengths. He is a great technician and all-around computer technician. He is now a teacher of technology like me.

The last, but not the least of the top four people that I look up to the most is my youngest son, who has mastered the English language and was able to shake off the hillbilly. (Most of the time). He is not only an English teacher but now an administrator of an English Language School. He is also a worldly traveler, who has been to many places I have dreamed of going.

If I had the opportunity to be anyone other than myself, who would I be? This is a question for me to answer…maybe because I have learned to be happy with who I am. I just wish I could have more strength to be who I really am on the inside and to do the things that make me happy.

I love many forms of art, but mostly before the media, I like artistic people. I am not crazy about Metal Art. It reminds me of being in a Mad Max movie.

My favorite childhood memories involve walking 3 miles from my home, down a gravel road to my grandma’s house to go fishing on the creek bank. I would carry my old cane pole over my shoulder while enjoying a green onion and mustard sandwich. Really? Who ever heard of that?


My favorite adult memories include being stationed with the Marine Corps Development and Education Command located in Quantico, Virginia. A typical day would find me up and out of the house, early in the morning, at 4 am or so. I would put on my warm clothes, then toss my hip boots in the trunk of my blue 1967 Chevy Impala Super Sport to run my beaver traps…I would get home in time to shower and change into a 3-piece suit, drive to the Washington DC airport and fly to Boston, Massachusetts, and meet with a team of Fiber Optic folks who worked as a government contractor, (Miter Corporation). There I was involved in developing Tactical Fiber Optics for the Marine Corps, or maybe to a meeting at the Pentagon or Headquarters Marine Corps. Then I would get home in time to run my traps again. I loved fishing on the Potomac and the Occoquan Rivers in my motorized canoe or camping on one of the lakes located on the base, over the weekend with my family.


When I had spare time on my hands, I enjoyed creating websites. This was a form of art that has not been embraced by the artist community.


In my younger years, I didn't like to organize things, stuff, etc.… It seemed that I had absolutely no skill set for this, It would drive me crazy and wastes so much of my time. That did change later in life.


I have no favorite authors. I used to love to read but ran out of time years ago. Now all I do is skim and read technical stuff, with a thirst, trying to stay on top of technology that seemed to move at the speed of NASA. I would prefer to listen to a book on tape because my mind won’t stay still enough to concentrate on reading. My favorite childhood books were Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. I used to enjoy reading Harold Robins novels while I lay in my rack at night, but not anymore. I would love to read the Great Classics like Shakespeare, Dante, and all the great works of Literature but I probably never will.


I have two brothers, one full and one half. My full brother is Buford Junior, who is younger than I am. I used to hurt terribly inside for him when he was just starting high school as I was preparing to leave after joining the Marine Corps. I had hopes of being a Marine Raider in Vietnam, just like my uncle was in World War II. I am not sure why my heart hurt for him so much. Maybe it had something to do with not wanting him to experience the things that I did when I was growing up. He grew up loving and respecting me but grew up with a hard heart that could sometimes be difficult for me to get around.

I have a half-brother, Jeffrey Lynn, younger than Buford. He is my father's son from a different Mother. I don't know him very well, but someday we will I hope to make up for lost time.


I have a lot of family. When my father died, I lost communication with most of his side of the family. It was the same on my mother’s side. The older ones are dying off and I don’t know much about the younger ones because I am not around them much. Most of my family comes from and lives in the Southern Indiana area. Some migrated to the Detroit, Michigan area in search of work in the automotive industry. I only had a couple of friends growing up. One while in the first 3 grades of elementary school. I moved away with my family for about a year, but when we moved back, he would not have anything to do with me because he made other friends. I never had a friend since then until my senior year.


I was always a little guy and spent a lot of my time in school being bullied and picked on. Heck, I only weighed 135 pounds when I joined the Marine Corps. During my senior year, I worked nights at the Rossburg truck stop. This is where I carried a Billy Club to thump the tires as I filled them up with diesel fuel. After many years of being bullied in school, I finally got fed up with it. One morning I slipped my club into my three-ring binder and took it to school to beat the crap out of a couple of mean kids. I no longer got to school and to my locker that morning, when I heard my name being called over the intercom to come to the principal's office. My father was there. I got worried, did my mother or one of my siblings get hurt? But it turned out that he must have seen me sneak the Billy Club inside of my binder as I prepared to get on the bus. To this day, I still don't know how he knew what was going on in my life and what I was planning to do. After being escorted to my locker to retrieve the club and being suspended for a week, we never spoke of the incident. Writing this makes me wonder if a student that shoots up his school does it for similar reasons.


From that day, it seemed as though I had gained some respect from everyone. I started to become popular and actually made a couple of friends. I don’t keep in touch with them, as our lives have taken totally different paths.


I never finished College. I attended several trade schools, took several college courses but I did earn over a hundred technical course completion certificates. Besides my current teaching degree, the only other degree I earned was a working man’s Ph.D., given to me by my oldest son.

I have no short-term goals because I don’t have time to accomplish them. My long-term goal is to find a way to do away with the day-to-day struggle and stress and get out of this hot, miserable desert. I need trees, hills, and water. I grew up a country boy that enjoyed hunting and fishing. I grew up with coon hunting dogs. I now live in the Mojave Desert in Southern California, where it is always hot, and the wind seems to always be blowing; both in excess.

It is even too damn hot to own a dog here, besides there is nothing to hunt but lizards and puny coyotes.


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