On the Journey Back

All roads for Jimmy led back to Lake Charles, Louisiana. It was his boyhood home, albeit one rife with parental discord and one which would later be run solely by an iron-fisted mother he was certain did not see him, much less understand him.

But who could understand him? He couldn't understand himself when at age eleven a dark deed befalls him and he is forced into secrecy. Driven into hiding masked by bravado, he fails in school and repeatedly runs away to his father's or parts West seeking reprieve. The early building blocks he experienced at his grandparents' farm, the Boy Scouts, and his mother's continual preaching of getting an education and staying the course all get tossed aside on a long and twisted road of survival and self-recovery.

Upon return from his second tour of duty in Vietnam, Jimmy proclaims to his biggest doubter that he wants to become a doctor. To her condescending response he bristles, "Watch me Mama...just watch me."

What he didn't know was that she had been watching all along - she was his biggest fan, and Lake Charles would be too. The town that once declared him as having reached his maximum potential hadn't seen anything yet.