Memory Lane in My Thoughts

I am sitting thinking of my childhood and all of the different things that made me who I am today. It is very difficult to pinpoint a changing point in most peoples lives but I can pick mine out with no problem. The summer between my 8th and 9th-grade year everything turned to hell. My life was turned upside down and there was never a chance to look back. My father lost everything thing that year, and our lives went to hell in a handbasket.

We were a well to do family in a small town, the kind where everyone knows everyone else. It was the late 70s early 80s and my parents had money rolling in and we were living high. I think it was more then my small town father could handle and between the booze, cocaine, and IRS it all fell apart. One day I came home from a friends and was told we were leaving for Florida. We left everything behind, our home, our belongs and our family and friends. When we got to Florida we had nothing and nowhere to go.

For the first 2 months we lived in a small hotel in Seminole County which is still there today. It has changed names many time but whenever I drive by it I remember those days at the Cavalier and what it was like to be homeless and unsure. They had a band that played out at the bar poolside and I remember listening to them with my feet in the water. They must of played *Africa * by Toto every night.

The part that hits me hardest is when school started and we needed supplies. At this point we had found a place to rent but money was still not to be found. My father had entered a depression that would last months (hell it might have been withdrawal looking back) and my mother was working for as a secretary for a doctors office. My little sister wanted a Trapper Keeper so bad and my mother was sitting there one night crying because she could not afford one for her. I rips my heart apart even now. I hope I am never in that position.