Soap Box

The simple, blue-collar society I was raised in would probably be considered, if not poor, at least far down the financial scale. We lived in a rented house, which had electricity, but our plumbing consisted of a hand pump on the back porch and a sanitary facility you had to walk to.

My mother cooked on a wood stove and we took our bathes in a galvanized wash tub which my Mother also used to do our laundry, scrubbing it by hand on a washboard.

We didn't own a car or have a telephone and ordered the majority of our clothes from the Sears Roebuck Catalog.

We lived out past what in those days was called the "car line" or past the point that was serviced by the city buses and if we wanted to go to town it required a walk up the road to catch a bus. 

My parents were young, my mother married my Dad when she was 17 and he was 18 and I came along a year or so later so my folks were energetic and fun. We always had food and clothes and the roof didn't leak, my Dad always had a job, my mother was an excellent cook and housekeeper, my maternal Grandparents lived a half-mile or so down the road and life was good.

As my Dad advanced in his work, we moved around a lot, I attended three schools in one school year more than once, but our family stayed together and we were happy.

My first real job was a water boy in a tobacco warehouse in Baxley, GA, the summer between the third and fourth grade and if my memory serves me, my pay was nine dollars a week.

I worked doing odd jobs, cutting grass, raking leaves, etc. in my younger years and did farm work in my teens. I've pulled tomato plants, picked cotton, cropped tobacco, and once cleaned out a chicken house, about the smelliest job I've ever attempted.

In my late teens I worked summer vacation at a creosote plant and took a job at a capacitor factory two weeks after finishing high school.

I quit my daytime job and went fully into pursuing a career in music in the summer of 1958 and with the exception of five weeks spent working in a junkyard in Denver, CO in 1962, have made my living in a music related fashion ever since.

I started working at a beer joint in Jacksonville, NC, a town about 50 miles from my hometown of Wilmington about two years before I quit my day time job, driving up and back six nights a week and holding down my day job five and a half days a week.

I had no social life and getting a few extra hours of sleep on Sunday, my only day off, was basically the high point of my week.

I played nightclubs for eleven years and moved to Nashville in 1967 having acquired a wife and baby along the way, determined to take a step up the ladder.

I got my first recording contract in 1971 but didn't have my first real career building album until I was 38 years old, with the real career booster not coming until I was 43 years old.

You may be wondering why I'm writing this mini autobiography, relating my early life of ups, downs and sideways.

The reason is twofold.

1. Taking an entry level job is not the end of the world and if you use it to develop work ethic and people skills can be used as a springboard to better things, much better things.

There is an old saying, "If you can't get what you want, take what you can get and make what you want out of it."

No matter how humble your beginnings, if you work hard, are easy to get along with and do a good job of whatever you're doing, that makes you valuable and you're eventually going to get noticed and if you keep on keeping on, you can climb right up the ladder.

2. I firmly believe that we, after making a total and honest evaluation of ourselves and finding ourselves equipped, should pursue whatever line of work we feel we can energetically devote the rest of our working lives to.

In my case it was music and I knew I would never be completely fulfilled until I went as far as I possibly could, so I went for it and stayed with it, making the sacrifices, overcoming the disappointments, taking advantage of opportunities and paying no attention to the naysayers who told me I didn't have what it takes or that I was getting too old.

Pursuing your dreams is a wonderful way to live, but dreams alone are not enough, you have to have a fire in your belly and determination in your heart and above all, a deep abiding love and respect for what you're doing. 

What I'm saying is, I would encourage you to follow your dreams, after all that's where your heart really is.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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