It occurred to me that since Jack hadn’t blogged for so long, some people might enjoy seeing a short summary of his life that he wrote while he was living in Texas, before he moved to Kansas and then eventually to the Leavenworth VA complex apartments. –Jeanne
Born 1943, mom went through three divorces by the time I was four, moving about from Texas, Arizona and New Mexico. Did grunt labor on farms and ranches weekends and after school all through my youth. Summer after junior year of HS I thought I’d quit school, so I followed the wheat harvest north into the Dakotas operating various equipment and hauling grain. Decided to try to finish HS after all. Found a town where I could manage it barely.
Joined the army after graduation, served three years, entered and eventually got booted out of Peace Corps training. Worked for a railroad a while, a dredging company, longshoring on the Houston docks, taxicab driving in Houston, going to the University of Houston nights, the University of Texas working construction on the side.
Made a living as a writer for a couple of years, then entered the first of two professional careers for about 20 years, Eventually decided what I was doing didn’t need to be done, so I changed professions for about 10 years until I decided that didn’t need doing either. Meanwhile I’d begun research on a particular lost gold mine and making trips west looking for it, became a pilot and bought an old airplane. Second career gradually became a way to support the search for the lost gold mine.
Y2K was coming up and I came to believe it would happen, so I cashed in all my retirement from two careers and bought a remote piece of land on the continental divide, built a cabin and began preparing to help all the refugees I believed would be coming out of the cities. When it didn’t happen I stayed around there about a year trying to figure out what to do next.
I did some of everything for the next decade, wild years of craziness among the sort of people I’d never been around, nor wished to. Eventually I ended up up destitute and supremely happy in this remote cabin in the Texas Hill Country with four cats and a flock of free-ranging chickens.
So Far From Heaven 
Jack certainly lived an interesting life and did his own thing.
I forgot about him cashing in his retirement accounts.
Yep… and pack rats got some of that, too.