Fourth and Long

My story begins in the housing projects of the Big Easy--New Orleans. The Big Easy is well known for its celebration to drinkers: Mardi Gras. Growing up in the Deep South during the "separate-but-equal" times, my father had two laws for my brothers and sisters and me: pray and get an education. Daddy believed that praying kept you close to God and that education was the key to a better way of living. The whole household lived by those two laws. My mother was a Southern Baptist with that "Good Old-Time Religion," so that is what I became. That was the beginning of the many religions that I would call my salvation.