Chapter 1

Well, things were going well for Lynn and me. We meet in high school and dated for several months. After graduation we married and started keeping house. Our first child was Barb our Daughter two years later Michael our son. After that Lynn made sure she stayed on the pill. I was in sales and after the kids got five or six years old Lynn went to work part time on several different jobs. We lived about twenty five miles north of St. Louis, Missouri. Five years ago we bought a larger house and I must say with a larger mortgage to go alone with it. Things were going well, so why not, I was making good money, about $90.-$100.00 a year. Lynn had opened a book store and coffee shop combined. About half the time she would turn a small profit if she was lucky. I figured she worked for about a dollar an hour. However that was o.k. she felt good about having her own business and I was doing o.k.

One of my school friends was purchasing manager for seven home improvement centers around the area. He gave me all of his plumbing supplies business. That is what I sold, plumbing supplies. With all the building going on and the new accounts I just picked up, we were doing very well. About May of 2007 things started to change, at first I thought it was a bump in the road, business slowed down for several weeks and then picked up again. For a few more weeks business was good again. Then it happen, seems like every week business seem to be off more and more. Then in early 2008 "BAM" it happen, business comes to a halt overnight, the housing boom had busted. Things lingered on for a few more weeks before the Plumbing Supply Co. I worked for went under. Here I was at 32 years old with wife and two kids and no job. And the bad thing is all sales position were in the same shape, all business was off and no job to be found anywhere. The St. Louis area was hit badly and unemployment went up to 11% overnight.

For several months I was out of work, we were living off my unemployment from the state each week. However after paying all the utilities and food we were broke no money for the mortgage. And on top of that with the bad economy Lynn was loosing money at the store and had to close. Lynn got a part time job at a clothing store downtown making minimum wage for about twenty hours a week. I started work at a road construction co, at about $14.00 an hour. However I was only working one or two weeks a month because business was off that much, even roads were not being built.

One day Lynn came home and said one of the ladies she worked with sister just quite her job at a production co. because her husband had taken a job out of state and had to move and the job might be available. She gave the company name and number to Lynn. The next day when Lynn was off she called to enquire about the job. The owner's wife set an interview for her for the next day. Lynn came home after the interview all excited for she got the job at a full time position for about $500.00 a week. A lot better than the $150.00 she was making at the department store. She said her job would be taking orders by phone and mail for the production material that the co. made. And that they had customers in over forty states. The owner's wife explained the company sent out catalogs for the customers review and they would call in the orders or mail the orders in and her job would be to process the orders.