I WANT A FREE RIDE (Part 1)

The year was 1997. I was working at a friends shop in Elgin Texas. This shop was deep in the woods on 10 acres of land. We had the shop, my partner’s house and 3 rental properties on the small compound. A family of 5 lived in one of the rental units. One of their children was actually a child from Dallas that was living with them because his parents couldn’t keep him away from the drug and gang culture in Dallas. His name was Cory and he was 13.

Cory didn’t go to school. In fact none of the children in the household were enrolled in school. The mother was supposed to be home schooling them. Cory spent a lot of time back at the shop. He was a good kid but didn’t take anything to serious. I guess he was a typical 13 year old.

About 2 months after meeting Cory he let slip that Rich the father of the household was jumping the fence and growing pot on the neighbor’s property. Not only was he growing it but he was smoking it with this 13 year old child. We made a call to his mother in Dallas and they came down to confront these so called friends. I thought that they would take Cory back to Dallas but instead asked if I would be his guardian.

I was living on a 177 acre ranch at this time. We were breeding and training horses and we also owned a little feed store in Webberville Texas. I decided to go ahead and take Cory, so his parents drew up all the paperwork and gave me full parental rights. I was now the father of a 14 year old. (All of this happened in October and Cory had turned 14.)

The first thing I did was enroll him in the Christian school here. That lasted about 2 months. He managed to get himself expelled for passing nasty pictures around the class.
Naturally it wasn’t his fault, but he was the only one to be punished for it. So now I have an 8th grade graduate that can’t keep himself in high school. I got a hold of all the study guides for the GED and made him start studying. He took and passed the GED on his first try. Hey nobody said he was stupid. In fact for having no education he is a really bright young man.

Cory and I sat down and talked about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He expressed an interest in fixing cars, so I brought him to work with me at the shop. After months of working at the shop and part time at the feed store we had enough of his bad attitude and hard head. I decided to put him in the Job Corps (as soon as he turned 17) to study automotive mechanics. I’d go and pick him up every weekend to come home. That is as long as he didn’t break any rules and earned a weekend pass. Two weeks before his graduation he gets expelled for shop lifting at the Wal Mart in San Marcos.

I gave Cory 2 choices 1) Go back to your parents in Dallas or 2) Join the U.S. Army. He chose the Army. He left for basic training at Ft. Knox KY. We drove up to Ft. Knox for his BCT graduation and were very surprised at the new and improved Cory we found.

Part 2 coming soon.