The Beginning

After graduating from high school and being immediately whisked away to college, not the school of my choice I might add, I never chose a major and never quite fit in so of course I did not make it. After three quarters the writing was on the wall so back home I went. Many jobs and two marriages later it was time to try again so in 1994 I went back to school to major in journalism. In the back of my head there was this idea that I could end up on the sidelines of every Dallas Cowboy football game, camera and pad in hand, and be a sports writer. For some reason one of the requirement courses was a class having to do the the legal system and for some reason I was hooked. All of a sudden the journalism was out the window having been replaced by Criminal Justice. Criminal Justice required courses in Political Science; Constitutional Law being one of them and the light bulb lit again and I became a double major. Luckily required papers, English Lit and joining the student government let me continue to write. After four years graduation loomed and even being a bit older it never entered my mind that I would have trouble getting a job at the local law enforcement center; I forgot where I lived I suppose and I forgot about that good old boy network. It turned out that out of all the people employed at the Sheriff's office only three had college degrees and the rest felt threatened by them. Heck, the Sheriff only had a third grade education, but hey, he was popular with those good old boys. It wasn't much different across the river except they encouraged their employees to go to college and the Chief had a college degree; what wasn't different was the tight knit group that found it difficult to let strangers in. After being shut down over and over it became evident that I was not going to get a job in my field of study so I hung on to the job I had hoping something else would come along; finally it happened. Two years after graduation I got a job as a probation officer and the stress began. I tried to keep both jobs but the customers at my first job, liquor store, started showing up at the new job and it became a sticky situation; the liquor store job had to go. Fast forward two years. Too much was going on in the probation office that was not legal. They were a private probation company without much if any oversight from the judicial system therefore they cut corners, formed alliances with solicitors and judge and squeezed money out of people in every possible way they could think of. We parted company and thus begins the next chapter of this tale.