Part 3C – Growing up in the U.S. – Moving out of my parents house / New Birth Experience / Marriage / Change of Life Style – 1973-1979 – My story
Moving out of my parents house
After graduating from college I lived with my parents and worked two jobs to save enough money to afford to move into my own place. At the time, my best friend and I had dreams of living “The Good Life” if that’s what you want to call it.
This involved living in a luxurious apartment, romanticism, eating out, carefree living, etc. Well to pull all of this off, you need money; thus the reason for two jobs. My primary job was working in Research & Development for an automotive company and my second job was working in the lounge of an up-scale hotel.
The hotel lounge provided a guitar musician who sang easy-going folk music at the start of the evening and then a live-band performed during the night. Famous local people frequented this lounge and many beautiful women.
Surprisingly the band was a Caucasian southern band that played some soul music songs. They played pretty good although sometimes after hours I would give them some tips on playing some soul music songs.
Needless to say I witnessed some things (you can read between the lines) working at the lounge, but for me it was a second income.
I must say after a year and a half I was able to accomplish my goal of saving enough money to move out of my parent’s house and into a luxury apartment complex on a lake with a golf course, tennis courts, and clubhouse . I’d just past my 20th birthday.
After I moved into my apartment, I quit my second job at the lounge and used my income and credit to support my new found lifestyle. I felt, “I’ve arrived” so let the parties begin! Begin they did after meeting some neighbors at the apartment complex who was like-minded concerning partying.
Supporting this lifestyle was not cheap, therefore using credit to subsidize my lifestyle lasted about 3 years until I ran into financial troubles and ultimately had to go to a credit counselor for help with my finances.
It was fun, fun, fun until my T-Bird got taken away (certain Baby Boomer Americans and others would know the meaning from an old Beach Boys song.)
What started out as living “The Good Life” turned into “The Financial Imprisonment Life.” I had to return to working another second job to pay all my bills and rarely had any time to enjoy living in my “luxury apartment.”
My New Birth Experience
The stress of working two jobs and commuting to them was taking its toll on me so I decided to take a vacation and drive my Trans Am to Texas from Michigan and visit some relatives. Once in Texas, I stopped at a country store and asked if I could use their phone to get directions to my relative’s house.
I proceeded to give the store clerk some money to use his phone and his response was, “You’re not going to be on there (phone) that long!” Southerners can be very direct in talking to you.
Once I arrived at my relative’s house we all greeted one another and were glad to see each other. That night my uncle (who was the pastor over a few churches) and I had an opportunity to talk one-on-one about life and spiritual matters. I wasn’t a religious person but I listened and the things we talked about gave me food for thought.
Return to Home from Texas
Not long after returning home from Texas I came across some information concerning prophecies written in the Bible’s Book of Revelation that gave information on the end times and the end of the world as we know it. This information was intriguing and very interesting to me, therefore I pursued reading it.
Nevertheless, my financial situation remained and one of my creditors recommended a credit counselor for me to see. Therefore I made an appointment and met with him. He counseled me concerning my indebtedness and strategies to resolve them and talked about general things and then he asked me if I was reading any books. I replied yes, it was a book entitled: “There’s A New World Coming” which explained verses in the Book of Revelation.
Each visit we talked about these things and other things from the Bible, the main thing being the fact that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” but that Jesus Christ could save us from our sins and give eternal life as found in the verse “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)
Good News
Each counseling session included some time spent on persuading me to accept Jesus Christ as being able to forgive me of my sins. Well, one thing was for sure, I didn’t have any case to support that I wasn’t a sinner.
As I thought to myself, “Hmm, if I could exchange my sins for God’s righteousness, that sounds like a good deal for me to be able to have everlasting life, so I put my trust in Jesus and was “born again.”
Needless to say this was surprising news to my partying friends. On one occasion I was at my parent’s house and one of my partying friends called to speak to me (not knowing my new experience) and my mom gave me the phone. The first thing my friend said, “Man you sound different!” I explained to him what happened to me and as a result my party days were over.
Because of my new birth experience my partying friends and I no longer had that and other things in common. They wished me well but were not ready to quit the party life style, therefore we grew apart but remained friends.
At this point I will write the remaining part of my story in Part 4 and beyond. Please stay tuned for it.
If you would like to read the previous posts on my autobiography, here are the post dates:
Part 1 – Introduction was posted on February 21, 2015
Part 2 – 1960’s (1960-1964) posted on March 1, 2015
Part 2B – Personal Life – “Moving from the Projects to the Suburbs” (1965-1969) posted on March 17, 2015
Part 3A – High School Days – (1969-1971) posted on May 25, 2015
Part 3B – National U.S. Life /College Life /First Job (1970-1973) posted on June 27, 2015
Lina and Joanross, thanks for your thoughts on culture, it has an influence on language.
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