Christopher Chvala:  

I grew up dirt poor, and I'm proud of it. While all the other kids had cool toys, I received clothes. I only received one toy for Christmas and one for my birthday. I had comic books when the other kids had their first Atari. When the other kids had snowmobiles for play, my family had one for work because we needed it to get the ice fishing houses on the lake we had for rent, and I lugged around 120-pound propane tanks. We heated our house with wood, so I had to bring firewood to the home daily while the other kids played. We also cut and split all that wood. My father was a fishing guide and charter boat captain. I worked for 5 years at the school cafeteria during lunchtime, earning minimum wage. This helped save my parents money because I got my lunch for free. While other students had free time, I worked washing dishes while having food thrown at me. I worked the summer before my junior year as a “Dock Boy” and was hardly ever tipped. Then, the summer before my senior year, I built houses, made minimum wage, and worked for my cousin. We had only one television station. We lived in a 1966 double-wide manufactured home that was so poorly constructed that we found that the little bit of fiberglass insulation inside the 2x2 inch outer wall was sitting at the bottom of the walls. No wonder it was so cold in my room; I was practically sleeping outside. That was the life on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation and Chippewa National Forest. Despite the poverty, I couldn't imagine growing up anywhere else but right there on the banks of the widest part of the Mississippi River, so wide they called it Lake Winnibigoshish. There is nothing like resort life; people paid to experience it for a weekend or more while I experienced it daily. When I was 14, I had a motorcycle accident, and now I have Traumatic Scoliosis. Many classmates wondered why I didn't play football because I was large from all the manual work. I never talked about my injuries. I could never do the 100 situps, so I got a poor grade, and everyone I did was extremely painful. I also felt that giving me a bad grade was unfair because I was injured. Although I had a doctor's note to excuse me from PE, I was required to lift weights, or I would get a failing grade. I should have refused because I'm now paying for it. How did lifting weights aid in my health while healing? It didn't; it made my condition worse. So, my dream of becoming self-employed might have seemed strange, but I wanted to travel the country to sell UFO kites. I thought it would be something easy for my back pain. I made a portable a frame sign in wood shop. I proved I could make money when I made a $200 profit in one day. Not a bad days wage in 1983, but the problem was out of m...Expand for more