A Long Way Home
Copyright© 2026 by Asa Strong
Chapter 1
The prairie of Eastern Colorado can be an unforgiving mistress. The wind never stops, and the heat in the summer can suck the life right out of you. Winter lives there with a vengeance that can pull the life force out of a body and leave it a frozen hulk. It is a stark place, devoid of what most people would consider ever meeting the essentials necessary to living a meaningful life. I was well aware of this as I drove west on Highway 36.
I guess if I’m going to tell this story, I’ll have to back up some, or it won’t make much sense. It is imperative that you understand where I come from. Like most, the where and how of my formative years impacted how I interact and view this world we all live in.
I was born in a small town, close to Asheville, North Carolina. I guess in most people’s eyes, it would be a good place to raise a family. For me, it would become a place I’d just as soon never see again.
My father was a banker, and his family had lived in this same area for generations. Like the rest of his family, he was Southern to the core. When I look back at my childhood, I can now see the fog of my father’s view of what he believed was correct and true skewed my early life experiences. He tried to carry the mantra of the Southern gentleman, but looking back over my early years, I can see he didn’t carry it off with any great distinction. His treatment of others was always viewed through the lens of his personal gratification. Little thought was given to the individual or group’s well-being; even in understanding the facts of a given situation, they were not of interest to him. He was a self-centered and egotistical man in every sense of the word.
The bank he worked at was established by my great-grandfather, and my father eventually became the president upon my grandfather’s death.
Volumes could be written about what people thought of my grandfather. I never knew him, as he and my grandmother died before I was born. Depending upon who was speaking, opinions ranged from him being just shy of being a savior of the southern way of life to being the devil incarnate. There is no doubt, though, that he left his mark on those he came into contact with.
My mother came from an aristocratic family of some prominence in Raleigh. Her family, like my father’s, was steeped in the old traditions of the South. Their history and wealth had started in commerce and later real estate speculation. Being a somewhat shy and studious youth, it is no wonder that I never got along well with either of them. They were firm believers in children being seen and not heard, and this suited me fine. I had no desire to interact with either of them. To this day, I have no fond memories of my time spent while in their company.
My parents met while my father was in college at UNC, in Chapel Hill. He would often attend society events in Raleigh and met my mother at one of the numerous social events they both attended on a regular basis. Evidently, they both relished attending the many social functions, so prevalent in this bastion of southern tradition. They were married the year my father graduated, in 1972.
It is my belief that my mother was not in favor of living in the small town where my father was raised. However, for whatever reasons, they moved there in 1974. They brought a son with them, one Hoyt Allen Wring, that being me.
For whatever reason, I was an only child. There was never any discussion that I can remember of having other children, and I never had the interest to inquire further on the matter.
My upbringing was typical of the social environment of that time. I grew up washed in the blood of the Old South. I was steeped in all the traditions that surrounded a small, white southern town in the 70s. By the time I reached high school, I was fully aware of all the reasons under the sun why the South had lost the Civil War. Bigotry and racial prejudice were the norm, and due to my mother’s influence, social status was added into the mix. During my high school years, I managed to see through most of this as being transparent attempts to maintain the status quo.
My Uncle Cecil was also a major influence as well. Not so much by what he said, it was more of the way he conducted himself. His attitude was completely different from that of my father. He was courteous to a fault, and there were many times he would try and help others that were less fortunate than he. This is not to say he made a habit of trying to help others; it was more in the way of him truly caring about those he came into his life in some way. I learned a lot about what ethics really mean by the example of the way he lived his life.
As I said previously, my father was a banker; as such, he considered himself to be knowledgeable and able to invest the family fortune in investments that would further enhance the family. Unfortunately, my father’s financial talents were somewhat short of the history of his forebears, much to the consternation of my mother. I later found out that when it came to investments, my father was less than adept. We were certainly not poor by any means; but my mother could never accept what she viewed as a step down in society. From what I could tell, she never felt at ease in the small-town atmosphere where we lived.
I know my mother never liked it where we lived and do not ever remember her saying a kind word about our home. She also took every opportunity that presented itself to return to Raleigh to visit her parents; often, staying for weeks at a time. She loved nothing more than visiting with her society friends and attending different social events. She reveled in the southern, aristocratic society that was prevalent in the social circle of her parents, and I don’t remember her being happier than when she was there.
Later, when I reached ten or so, she would take me with her when school was out for the summer. She insisted I become a part of her world and would spend hours schooling me in the ways of being a gentleman. I never felt a part of my mother’s world in Raleigh; the casual ease with which she navigated through the social scene was beyond me. I had no regard for the niceties required to be a part of the balls and parties she so enjoyed. To me, they were a horror; I always felt out of place when forced to attend them, and soon learned to detest them with a passion. This continued until I graduated from high school.
As a child, I was small. It wasn’t until my later teen years that I would grow into my present 190 pounds, six-foot-two frame. I was also an introspective child, perfectly content being by myself with only a good book for company. My Uncle Cecil used to say I’d pay hell for growing up with Thomas Wolfe running around in my head. I really didn’t care for reading Wolfe, and to this day, believe this remark was directed at how the situation I lived in at home would affect me growing up.
Academically, high school was not much of a challenge. Good grades came easily for me, and I was blessed with a good memory. I naturally took to learning new things, and I guess the teachers responded to that. This, of course, did not endear me to my classmates. I also was not a very athletic person, and the violence of football was anathema to me. The thought of causing harm to someone else was beyond my comprehension. As you may have guessed, this did nothing to advance my social standing.
Saying I was an outcast would not be entirely correct, as being from a prominent family still had some hold over my peers, but it was not far off the mark. I never really faced the bullies that many kids of small stature incur; it was more a situation where I was ignored. I lived in my own world during my high school years. Mostly, my social interactions with the other kids were that of an observer. I watched others growing up and making stupid mistakes, vowing never to do so myself.
My parents and I had all made plans for me after I graduated from high school. Unfortunately, they were all different. My father wanted me to follow in his footsteps and eventually work at the bank. Of course, this would entail a college education with a degree in business or finance. My mother had a vision of a future for me outside of what she called “This God-forsaken place in the middle of nowhere”. Her priority was to have me attend a good college, where I could meet “the right type of girl” and settle down into a life of privilege, preferably in Raleigh. I pretty much kept my plans to myself, limited though they were. My need was to just get away from it all - the town, my parents, and what I considered a restricted way of life, with little in the way of what I wanted to experience.
My father’s brother, Cecil, owned a fairly large farm just outside of town and grew mostly cotton and tobacco. When I was about thirteen, I started working for him in the summer. My first jobs were rather trivial; hoeing tobacco plants comes to mind immediately. Later, when I had more experience, he would entrust me with the supervision of some of the blacks that worked on the farm. In addition to learning the appreciation of growing things, I also learned how to use the farm implements. I could drive a tractor and plow straight furrows with the best of the farm help. Being that he was my uncle and had no children, Uncle Cecil also paid me pretty well. This allowed me to buy a new pickup truck when I turned sixteen. This also allowed me to put into plan my escape, for what I hoped would be a new life, one that better suited me.
Uncle Cecil was the only one on both sides of my family I respected. He had never married and was considered by the rest of my father’s family as being a bit odd. My mother plainly ignored him whenever he was present. I had a certain affinity with him that was hard to describe. I could be myself with him, and he and I would often have discussions ranging across a wide spectrum of subjects. Many a summer evening was spent on his back porch in conversation, he with his bourbon and branch water, me with a soda. We were very close, but it seemed to me there was a small portion of Uncle Cecil that was hidden from me. Although I never discussed it with him, I believe he was the only one in the family that had an inkling of what I had planned after graduation. I can still hear him telling me in that soft, southern drawl, “Hoyt, growing up to be a man is hard business.”
The weeks leading up to my graduation in 1992 consisted mostly of arguing with my parents. I had told them that before I did anything with college, I was going to get away and learn a little bit about the rest of the world. To say the least, they were not receptive. There were many arguments and pleadings from both of them. I was determined to carry forth with my desire to leave and held fast to that belief. Regardless of my insistence, the arguments did not cease. Uncle Cecil was my rock during this time. His comments were more to the fact of my preparedness for such an endeavor. As it turned out, I was not on the best of terms with either parent when I drove out of town in the summer of 1992. But at that time, I really didn’t care. I had my pickup truck, with a full tank of gas and over two thousand dollars in my jeans.
I spent that summer traveling, mostly through the Southern States. I spent my time in and around cities. To a kid from a small town, my perception was that cities were where the action was. I visited: Birmingham, Atlanta, Savannah, Chattanooga, and several other smaller cities and towns. Often, I would sleep in my truck. The weather was warm, and it helped conserve my dwindling money supply.
By the time August rolled around, I was in New Orleans and getting low on cash. I either had to return home and face the music or find employment. Never having been one that was afraid of work, it was not difficult to find a job. The second day after I started looking, I was standing on a roadbed, shovel in hand, working for a construction company as a laborer. The job, although physically challenging, was not hard for an eighteen-year-old kid full of piss and vinegar. Within six months, I learned to operate a road grader. After two years, I could run or operate just about any piece of equipment in the company.