I've been doing audio mower for about five days. I've met a lot of nice people here, so I thought I'd borrow a page from one of them and tell you a little bit about myself as introduction. One of the names that I go by is Buster Jack. I was born in a little community in Tennessee called Only, which is about 50 miles west of Nashville.
My father was a tenant farmer and his father before him. Sometimes when living became difficult, they dabbled in moonshine. When I was about two years old, my grandfather got in trouble for moonshining and he and my father hottailed it to Arkansas and settled in a little town called Visco, which is about 50 miles east of Little Rock. They stayed there for about three years until the danger was over.
They changed their name to Powell and I became Powell too. After the three years, they moved back to Only and lived there for about a month and then moved to Western Tennessee to a little community called Brownsville. They stayed there for three years and then they moved or my father moved back to Arkansas, my grandpa moved back to Only. Now I have been visually impaired since birth.
So when I was five years old, I went to the Tennessee residential school for the blind. I stayed there for three years and then when my father moved back to Arkansas to eastern Arkansas about 20 miles west of West Memphis, then I came back to Arkansas too of course and I enrolled at the Arkansas school for the blind and graduated from there. I then went to college and graduated from college and became a teacher. I talked for some 30 years and then I became principal for about five years and I preferred teaching so I went back to teaching.
I was an elementary teacher, primarily a math teacher. As the son of a tenant farmer, I learned to do the jobs on a tenant farm. I learned to pick cotton. I couldn't pick very much but I did the best I could.
I couldn't see well enough to chop cotton so they made me waterboy and I carried the water to the people who were hoeing cotton and that became my name was Waterboy and most people did not know my name but they simply called me Waterboy. One motivation that I had when I was growing up was that I wanted to get an education so I could get off of the farm because number one I couldn't see to do it very well and number two it was a very tedious and hard job and I wanted something better for myself and that's what motivated me through college and enabled me to get a job. During that period of time I had lots of people who helped me and I've been indebted to all those people. I have lived several lives.
First on the tenant farm then at a residential school and then in college and then as a teacher I've met all sorts of interesting people and I've always liked people and I find them very interesting. As long as people are kind and want to help other people I've always gotten along with them and I've always respected them regardless of how intelligent they were or what they did for a living. I do not think that people are strange. I just think that they're unique and I like knowing them and I like talking about them.
I retired about five years ago ago I attend West Overheels Presbyterian Church in Little Rock Arkansas. I sing in the choir and I do what I can to helping other people because I feel a great debt to all of the people who helped me and I believe the best way to pay that back is to try to help other people. So that's the reason that I am involved in the church in order to help people who don't have enough to eat, who don't have enough clothes or who need some help. I'm real fond of the homeless and people who can't help themselves.
I've always been very fond of children and underprivileged people. I've always felt that my responsibility was to try to live as good a life as I could and to try to live according to my principles and my beliefs and not to judge other people for not doing as I did or being as I thought they should be. I think it's enough that I take care of myself and follow my own principles and make sure that I follow my own principles. I intend to devote the rest of my life to try to help people who don't have what I have because I'm extremely fortunate to be where I am today.
What I have told you in this brief introduction is true and the podcasts, the stories that I tell on my podcasts are true also. Sometimes I have changed the names of people because I don't want to embarrass anyone because when I tell these stories it's not to make fun of people or to ridicule them, it's just simply to tell about people that I find interesting. I assume one of my characters in the podcasts, I'm doing it in order to have fun with the podcast and to try to imitate the language of the people of whom I'm talking about but my purpose is not to ridicule or to make fun of anyone. In some cases I have changed my relationship to the people, I have changed their names but the podcasts are factual and they do represent the truth.
I'm very proud of whom I am, who I am and I'm proud of the people that I have known and I'm proud to be podcasting and to know all the people that I've met here in this audio moe experience. That gives you an idea about who I am and maybe you will text me or talk to me or give me some feedback on my podcasts but it's been nice learning about people and getting to know people and that's been one of the greatest pleasures that I've had in doing these podcasts. So I'll say goodbye to you, I've tried to make this as brief as I could and I just hope that you realize that even though I joke a lot I'm a very sincere person.