I got a dorm room at the college and gave up my studio apartment. I had no idea what I would major in but they had a heavy equipment operation class that I was very interested in. Part of the equipment course was in the classroom and the other part was operating the equipment in the field. They had their own equipment in a large area behind the college. My other courses were the normal math, english etc. I received my curriculum, books etc. and went to my first class which was math. This was the lowest level math class that the school ran. I realised as soon as the instructor began speaking that I knew absolutely nothing about any of it. My level of education was about equal to that of a seventh grader and here I was starting college. I immediately inquired about a tutor but I could not afford one. The only thing that I could do was to do the best that I could and hope for the best. I was doing great in the heavy equipment operation class but began to lose interest in the other classes as everything was going over my head. I was going to the gym regularly and enjoyed eating at the school cafeteria. I had paid for my school meals in advance for the semester. The other kids did not accept me because I was so different to them and I was a little bit lonely. I made one friend that I would exercise with and another friend in the town. Both of my friends did not really accept me though for different reasons. The friend at college could see that I was not like everybody else and the friend in town assumed that I was a goody two shoes from the local college which couldn’t be further from the truth. My sister introduced me to a girl that was not in her circle of friends and she was a bit weird. Her parents were strict religious buffs and would lock her in the closet if she didn’t recite her prayers. I knew that everything was going to crash and burn eventually. My grades were failing and my money ran out very quickly. I took my girlfriend around the dorm room and we were having sex while others in the next room were shouting a bunch of rude comments. There was one kid who was the biggest and also seemed to have the biggest mouth. I decided to take him on and he caught me off guard with a haymaker punch. He connected with my eye and it ended up swelling completely shut. My girlfriend and I broke up shortly afterwards. I was beginning to lose it a bit and was somewhat despondent. My sister then announced that her and my grandmother were going down south to visit family over the Christmas break and I was not invited. I managed to stay in the dorm along with a handful of foreign exchange students. Everyone else had gone to spend the holidays with their family. I was really beginning to lose it and got a black marker and began writing expletive messages on my dorm room floor mostly about my room mate who I didn’t like. Everyone came back from their Christmas holidays and the staff discovered what I had done to the carpet. They threw me out of the dorm. I had a little bit of money left in the college fund and managed to convince the trustee to rent me a studio apartment next to the college. It was not long before the money ran out completely and I was failing in all of my coursework except for the heavy equipment operation. The college told me that I had to be keeping up a passing grade in my other subjects in order to stay in the college. I could not just do the heavy equipment course and no other so I was forced to leave. I had applied for the California conservation corporation. It is a program for young people to learn forest management skills. The program was mostly geared around fire fighting and prevention. I was accepted into the program and they shipped me off to their boot camp in the mountains. I enjoyed the training and turned out to be very popular there. The other kids liked me and I found a girlfriend. They had a big open air induction and announced my name over the loud speaker. The councillors were introducing a few of the kids and picked my name out of the hat. They said that this is Scott Roberts from Yreka and asked me to stand up. I stood up in the open area amongst a thousand other kids and they all knew who I was from that point onwards. It felt nice to be recognised but I thought that I was far different to your average kid from Yreka. I think that the other kids liked me because they were mostly kids from difficult or low income homes. They kind of looked up to me because of my hard core attitude. I had no problem in the bootcamp and was waiting to get shipped off to one of many locations around California. I was really hoping that it would be someplace nice in the mountains. My girlfriend and I said our goodbyes and they shipped me off to Treasure island across from Alcatraz in San Francisco bay. My first thought was that they have got to be fucking kidding me! The accommodation was in one of the old military barracks on a manmade island of rock. I knew that this was not going to work for me. They took us out to work during the day and it had nothing to do with forestry. We were picking up trash along the road like a chain gang. I came back from work one day with the other kids and I was starving. We had set meal times and the next meal was not for around three hours. The cafeteria door was locked so I climbed in the window and made myself a sandwich. They caught me and I was terminated from the program. They sent me back to Yreka by bus. The studio in the back of the butcher shop in Yreka was still vacant so I managed to rent it again and I went back on unemployment allowance. I still could not find a job except for a the odd one here or there digging or stringing barbed wire. I eventually could no longer keep up the rent so I had to rent a little trailer from somebody. My sister had graduated from high school and decided that she wanted to go to Humboldt State University near Eureka California. She rented an apartment there with her boyfriend and later moved into the University dorm. I had managed to get a job as a nightshift security guard at the College of the Redwoods which was close to where my sister was. The college also rented me a dorm room which was more like a motel room. It was just a room with a toilet and a shower. I did not have anything to cook on and was not earning enough money to eat out the entire time. I was absolutely starving. The university where my sister was going had a cafeteria and I managed to get a meal plan for a couple of months. That soon ran out though and I could not afford to get another one. I was then thrown out by security shortly afterwards for stealing food from the cafeteria. They found out that I was working as a security guard for the other college so I was fired from there and kicked out of the dorm. I was then forced to live in my truck. That area is well known for it’s marijuana crops and I was smoking a lot of it as it was pretty cheap. I was going days without eating anything and began to go a little nuts and began hearing voices in my head. I went back to my sisters university to steal some more food from the cafeteria. The security could see that I was a bit nuts and they had me taken to the looney bin. I phoned my sister and she came to see me there. I was still a little bit nuts at that point but regained my sanity once I had a few meals down me and they let me out after about a week. I hitched a ride back to Yreka and did not know what I was going to do. A guy had given me a lift in his pickup truck and he stopped to let me out on a rural section of highway just outside Yreka. I got out and walked across the highway towards Yreka when I heard him shouting at me. He said that I had left my bag in the back of his truck. There were no cars on the highway when I went across but I had noticed a small car off in the distance. I went back across the road to get my bag without looking. The car that I had noticed in the distance was now upon me. I had a second to jump up in the air to the side of the speeding car. My legs did not clear the windshield though and the car sent me spinning off to the side. I was lucky that my legs hit the car instead of my head however the impact had broken one of my legs. The bone in my leg was not broken all of the way through so I could stand on it a little bit and I was full of adrenaline. I managed to get up and hobble over to the guys truck to get my bag. He then dropped me off at the hospital. The hospital refused to treat me however because I did not have medical insurance. They refused to x-ray my leg or do anything. They told me that I had to leave the hospital and I explained that I could barely walk. They went into their broom closet and found and old dusty crutch for me. I managed to hobble to a motel in the area. The pain was beginning to take hold so I purchased the biggest bottle of whiskey that I could find. The leg began to swell up until it was twice its normal size and black and blue. It was hard to the touch and the pain was absolutely excruciating. I did not sleep much that night or for the next couple of weeks. I thought to myself that if I get through this then I was going to do something radical as I could not go on like this any longer. I could walk a little bit without the crutch in about three weeks but I still had massive swelling and my leg was black and blue. I went straight over to the US Army recruitment center and enlisted. My medical appointment was about a month later and the swelling had gone down by then but I still had some bruising. The medical center never picked up on it though. The Army sent me to basic training in Fort Sill Oklahoma. It was the longest training program that the Army had at that time and was thirteen weeks of training and thirteen weeks of AIT. I had no problem with it and turned out to be a natural leader. We would usually train from nineteen to twenty-one hours a day and I would go to the gym afterwards. I guess that I was kind of a glutton for punishment. I got through the training and only had about ten days to go. Their was a conflict in Nicaragua at the time that they were calling a police action. We were all sitting next to the tarmac runway waiting for our name to come up. They were calling names in alphabetical order and my name never came up. The last few days of training was beginning to wind down but we were still doing allot of running with seventy pound packs on our backs. The hardest part of the training for me was a bout with pneumonia. I was given antibiotics and told to get back to training. I had a very high fever and collapsed on a road march. I had blacked out for a couple of seconds and woke up on the ground with a drill sergeant kicking me in the ribs and telling me to get up. I got up and the drill sergeant went away. I knew that I could not stay on my feet so I grabbed ahold of the bumper on a army truck as it came by and let it drag me up to the front of the platoon. It was really dark and nobody even noticed. The truck drug me along the dirt road for about ten minutes and I felt a little bit better once I was at the front of the platoon so I let go of the bumper and ran the rest of the way with the platoon. I was in top physical shape at the end of my training and running with a pack was a breeze for me. We were running down the road one day with less then a week of training left when I heard a loud snap. I was wondering what it was because there were no branches or twigs on the ground. I took a couple more steps and lost the feeling in my foot. The bone in my leg had snapped because it had never been set. It must have been pressing on a nerve because I had no feeling in my foot. I was taken to the medic who finally x-rayed it. The medic confirmed that my leg was broken and could see that there was a previous break which had not set correctly. I was hoping that they would allow my leg to heal and finish my last week of training afterwards. The medic put a splint on my leg and gave me some crutches. The senior drill sergeant had asked to speak with me so I went to his office. He said that he had picked me out of the crowd previously and thought that I was a good soldier with leadership qualities. I think that I had got his attention previously when I broke a tray over a guys face in the canteen while waiting in line for a meal. The guy had pushed me a couple of times which he had noticed. I had to stand at attention for several hours as my punishment and the other guy was sent to the brig for a couple of days. This was obviously due to the senior drill sergeant seeing the other guy provoking me. I guess that I kind of stood out in the crowd after that. The other guys in my platoon had nominated me as their leader as well which kind of surprised me. I was not aware of my leadership qualities and was just doing what came natural to me. I guess this came from the life that I had led and having to look after myself. The senior drill sergeant told me that if it was war time then his decision would probably be different but that he had to discharge me. He went on to say that the army had found my criminal record and that they had been preparing my discharge for a couple of weeks previously. I was going to be discharged with or without a broken leg in other words. I had not told them about my criminal record when I enlisted. I was told to see the discharge specialist and sign some paperwork. The Army said that it would take a couple more weeks to complete my discharge.

Next Chapter: Chapter six