People want to know why I care. Why I post about Epstein. Well it really none of your damn business. But everybody has a reason. Here's mine.

Cigarettes

I came into this world in a shotgun shack perched on the edge of nowhere near Ozark, Alabama. Our back porch looked straight into the endless green wall of the Conecuh National Forest. That forest wasn't just trees; it was my childhood, my responsibility, and sometimes, my only hope.

My daddy... well, he walked out one day when I was six, muttering something about cigarettes. We never saw hide nor hair of him again. Left me with Mama, a diabetic so sick she couldn't leave her bed. She stayed there, fading slowly, until the day I turned eighteen, when she finally let go.

Growing up? It’s mostly a blur of hunger and worry. What I remember sharp as a tack is heading into that deep, dark forest with the only decent thing my daddy ever left behind: my Marlin .81 rifle. I hunted for me and Mama. Possum simmering in a pot. Squirrel roasted over coals. Rabbit stew. Even rats, when times were lean enough to make your stomach ache worse than your feet.

An Angel in Kilby

Life took its turns, some down paths I ain't proud of, and I ended up inside the high, grim walls of Kilby Prison in the late 1960s. That’s where the real story of my life began. The first time I saw her, it was through a haze of pain and tears. There’d been a "dust-up" in the yard – doesn't matter now what started it, just that it ended with me busted up in the infirmary. I was hurting, scared, and feeling lower than dirt.

Then she came. Slowly, like a figure emerging from a fog, she hovered over my cot. She wore a crisp, starched uniform white as ivory. Her smile, soft and kind, cut through the prison gloom. But it was her touch – gentle, sure, tending my wounds without a flicker of judgment – that seared itself into my soul. A ray of sunshine in that hell of concrete and regret.

The rest, well, you might say it was written in the stars, though few folks looking at us then would have believed it. A prison nurse and an inmate. But her belief was all that mattered. When I finally walked free, carrying nothing but the clothes on my back and a heart full of awe for her, I took her straight back to that old Ozark shack. Not much to offer, but I offered it all. And she became my wife.

The Florsheim Box

Life with her was a blessing I never thought I’d earn. We built something solid, brick by careful brick, out of nothing but grit and faith. But we were poor man. Poor.

Seeing her in a dress worn thin at the elbows, or shoes scuffed raw at the toe, would hit me like a gut punch. It stirred that old, deep fear – the fear of not providing, of failing her like I failed before.

"I’ll buy you something new," I’d vow, my voice thick with the need to make things right, to shower her with the comfort she deserved. "A proper dress. Good shoes."

She’d just look at me, that same gentle knowing in her eyes she’d had in the infirmary, and she’d make her quiet request, the one she always made: "Go and get the old Florsheim shoe box."

My resolve would crumble. I couldn’t keep the secret burning in my chest. I’d confess my plan before I ever reached the store. And she’d say it again, softly, firmly: "Go and get the old Florsheim shoe box."

So, I’d go. I’d fetch that sturdy old box, once home to a pair of fine men's shoes long gone. And I’d take the cash – the money meant for her new dress, her new shoes – and I’d place it inside. Carefully. Dutifully.

Over fifty years, that box filled. Dollar by dollar, bill by bill, it swelled until the lid strained.

Then, in 2022, something unprecedented happened. She didn’t wait for me to notice a frayed cuff or a worn heel. She called out to me, her voice clear but weaker than it used to be: "Bring me the old shoe box."

My heart slammed against my ribs. A cold wave washed over me. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. This had never happened before. In silence, heavy with a lifetime of unspoken understanding, I went to the closet. The box felt heavier than ever as I carried it to her. I sat beside her on the edge of the bed, close enough to feel the frailness that had settled into her bones.

Her hands, twisted and knotted by arthritis, the same hands that had healed me, fed me, loved me for half a century, worked slowly. She lifted the lid and set it aside. Inside lay a dense, packed mass of paper. She gazed at it, not touching, just looking. Thoughtful. Silent. The air hummed with the weight of decades, of sacrifice, of a purpose only she fully knew. Minutes stretched, filled only by the quiet rhythm of her breath and the pounding of my own heart. She closed the lid without a word.

I never saw the box again. She never spoke of it. And I never asked.

A few months later, she left me. Passed peaceful in her sleep, slipping away as quietly as she’d lived much of her life . The silence she left behind was a vast, aching thing.

Empty

It took months before I found the strength to face her closet, to sort through the tangible pieces of a life shared. And there it was. Tucked away in the top corner, where only she could have placed it. The old Florsheim shoe box.

I lifted it down. It was light. Too light. With trembling hands, I opened it.

Empty. Like the house.

Trump

It was only later when I discovered what had happened with the money. Our at least I think I did.

There was a letter from Donald Trump. He was thanking my wife for the generous gift. Enclosed was a signed photo.

I was stunned. Perplexed. I had never in fifty years heard my wife utter a political word. I could not understand it and I never will.

But I'll tell you one damn thing. I'm vested in this President. I expect him to be worthy of the trust apparently put in him.

Be worthy.