It all began one day in April of 1997. I had been told in the first couple days of the month that the position I held was being cut and I would be laid off at the end of the month. My wife had just quit her job with the US Forest Service after 17 years on the 4 of that same month. Anyway I continued to work and look for another position so there would not be any interruption in my income. My wife had started a ceramic shop and it had grown over several years to the point that it would replace her income. I was doing all the casting for her shop in the evenings after my normal 8 hour days and on the weekends. On the 18th of April I woke up with what I thought was indigestion from some chicken we had, had the evening before. I didn't think much about it and went out to the shop to do some pouring or clay to get a few pieces made for the wife's shop. By noon that day I was hurting pretty bad and after I ate a light lunch went back to the shop to open the last of the molds that were poured just before lunch. I managed to get them done and out and on the drying rack. I told my wife I was going to go in the house and take it easy for a while as I didn't feel good. Maybe take a nap or watch TV. I sat down in my Lazy Boy and started watching TV and then went to sleep. A couple hours later I was awaken by the pain in my lower gut and needed to go to the bathroom in a hurry. After several explosive discharges and about 15 minutes of setting there I figured I needed to take something. So I drank a dose of Maalox went back to my chair and tried to watch TV again. But the pain was getting worse. Finally about 4:30 my wife came in to check on me and found me doubled over in my chair white as a sheet and said we are going to the ER and can you make it to the car? At the ER they decided I had a bad appendix and surgery was scheduled and I was taken up immediately. Next think I knew I was waking up again with some pain in my lower belly area. The nurse told me that they had done the surgery but the appendix was fine but my colon had ruptured and they had done a colonoscopy on me. Well I got over the surgery okay and during the 6 weeks of recovery I did a lot of looking into different types of jobs that I could do or was qualified for. I could no longer lift and carry heavy loads as I had done before. I had thousands of dollars worth of tools for working in the automotive industry. One day I happened to talk to my old supervisor in the shop I was working in. He did all the electrical rebuilding for the NAPA store we worked at. He said he was going to quit and start his own machine shop at his home clear on the other side of town from where I am and that the NAPA store was not going to fill his position. This gave me the idea that this town will not have an electrical rebuilder with him gone and that I had most of the tools needed and the knowledge. With a small sum I borrowed from my mother I bought the test bench and lathe that would be required to start Peoria Electric. I am located on Peoria Road so the name fit nicely. So I started repairing and rebuilding starters, alternators and generators for the farmers around the area as well as some of the shops in town. My name spread by word of mouth and my working relationship with the parts houses in town and the business grew slowly. Meanwhile my wife's ceramic business was growing by leaps and bounds. I was pouring over 40 gallons of slip, or liquid clay, a week and barely able to keep up. I would go out in the morning and set up the pouring table and pour a batch wait a short time and dump those molds. Then I would go into my shop and work on a starter or alternator for about an hour, usually enough time to finish that unit. Then go back and take the pieces out of the molds set up and pour another batch. Sometimes I would do that 5 or 6 times during the day. About the 4th year into this the wife's business was grossing over $50,000 a year and my business was doing about $25,000 - $30,000. In about the 6th year I started having trouble with my lower back and went to the doctor. He said it was time to do some tests. The tests showed a marked lack of kidney function and he recommended that I contact the VA for an appointment, which I did. The VA said that I was in end stage renal failure and they tried for about 6 months to control it with medication. Finally I was so bad off I could only work about an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. The rest of the time I slept. I finally convinced the VA to let me go on dialysis through the local clinic. They said okay as they couldn't schedule the surgery needed to place a catheter sooner than 2 to 3 months. I told them I would be dead by then at the rate I was failing. The local clinic scheduled the surgery and I had the catheter placed and started peritoneal dialysis 10 days later. I started to perk right up and within a couple months I was back working full days again although taking time out to rest more often than before. While this was all going on my wife figured out that she couldn't run the farm and her shop and keep the house and all those other things if something was to happen to me where I couldn't do anything or if I died. So she asked me if maybe we should sell the farm and her shop and possibly my shop. This was just after the 9-11 trade center bombing and her business dropped off like shutting off a 1/4 turn water valve. One month before 9-11 she was doing over $3000 a month and after 9-11 she was doing $500 a month. Anyway we put the farm on the market and put out the word that the ceramic shop was for sale. We got the surprise of our life in that within 2 weeks the ceramic shop was totally sold and gone, 5 kilns, 2000+ molds, pouring table, display racks, paints and glazes, simply everything sold. It took another 6 months to sell the property. We had decided that we would go to live in a motorhome full time so we had an auction and sold everything else except my shop. Some good friends came one Saturday afternoon and moved my shop complete to a new location just up the road 3 miles from our old place. All I had to do was set it up again and open the door again. Took me about 2 weeks to get things organized enough to open and I have been at it sense then 5 days a week 9:00 to 5:00. My gross now has been averaging very close to $50,000 a year give or take a bit. Sense the dip in the economy started I have had a lot of really slow days but I hang in there and when something comes in I get it done and back out. Most of what I do these days is repair but occasionally someone will want a complete overhaul or rebuild as we call it in this industry and I can do that. But most folks are looking for fast and the least expensive that they can get. I provide that without cutting corners on quality. The customer gets his original unit back complete with the grease or dirt that it had when it came in. I only clean when I need to, to fix the problem and give them back their unit. Cleaning only adds dollars to the bill and doesn't make the unit work any better. I am somewhat of a maverick in this industry in that I let people watch what I do and charge only for my time and parts that I use to repair their unit. This works for me and my customers spread the word to their friends that I am fair, fast and will save them a bunch of money. I have been at this location now 4 years and on dialysis nightly for a bit over 4 years. I have passed all the health tests to get a transplant kidney through the VA from my daughter if we are a close enough match.

Last year I got a letter in the mail from my county government asking that I fill out a personal property that I use in my business survey. I filled it out and sent it in. They sent me a personal property tax bill for using my own tools in my business. If that is helping small business then I guess I should just quit and let the government take care of me. What this country needs from the top all the way down to the lowest level of government is one tax system that covers it all. I remember reading a few years ago about an equal tax system that said at that time if we had a 3% tax on everything at every level no exceptions we could fund all of the programs currently in operation or proposed and pay off the national debt and eliminate all the rest of the taxes there are. It might need to be 4% now to do the same thing and with this huge stimulus package that is working its way through our system we may need to add another 4% for a few years just to pay for it. I have to ask why we are bailing out these big insurance and banking corporations as well as the big 3 auto makers. Let them go bankrupt then the court can split them up and write new contracts with unions and close out the unprofitable parts and let them reemerge as new healthy companies. That is all part of the trick down theory I think. You either make it in this business world or you fail and then you try again once you have gotten rid of the pork. Our government needs to take a look at these large corporations that are failing because the government may be in the same boat and will need to know how to fix itself if that is possible. We the citizens of this country should demand that our congressmen and senators stop adding pork to every bill that gets brought up. Sure some of that pork is necessary work that needs to get done but if it is really needed then it should be able to stand alone. So bring it up alone and yea or nea and pass it on up the line till it gets to the president and he can put the final stamp or approval or not on it. Then if he vetoes it, it can be brought back before congress and if they can over ride the veto it will get approved. One bill at a time with one item at a time on that bill is what needs to happen. It is that or give the president line item veto power.

Today, Friday the 6th of March I get a letter from Dick Armey asking me to relate my story so there it is in all its blood and guts. The part about how to fix the government is just my idea and along with a lot of other people think it should work if we could get the politics out of government. How to do that is way beyond my pay grade, as we used to say when I was in the navy. But I do have a few ideas I could pass along if anyone is interested.