stwarekphoto's photostream

This is Pat. Pat is 76 years old. Pat just got to Gastonia to rediscover her roots. In the early 1800s, her family came to America from Scotland and ran an extremely successful tobacco crop in Gaston County. While she doesn't know much about the history, she is confidant she can rediscover some of it by moving here from Texas. Pat did not have an easy life growing up. With an alcoholic father and a schizophrenic mother, she was often left to fend for herself. She was responsible for raising her younger brother at the young age of six. She has scars on her knuckles from where she used to beat up boys who picked on him. Some of her most vivid memories come from picking cotton on a plantation in Texas so her mother could make her clothes. Pat never graduated from high school, but her family life led her to study psychology and art on her own. She is still trying to get over the fact that her son was killed in 2001 after an oil rig broke down and crushed his skull. He survived the initial accident, but died four years later due to complications. Pat has spent plenty of time in Tokyo and says if she could live anywhere else in the world, it would be there. Pat smokes Marlboro menthols.

This is Jim. Jim is 62 years old. Jim is a first degree black belt in karate and also studies martial arts involving Samurai swords. He has worked almost every job in the newspaper industry from reporter, to photographer to working the printing press at the L.A. times. His interests include Japanese calligraphy, playing guitar and eating his Japanese-American wife's cooking. He grew up in a stable family environment eating mostly vension and squirrel. Jim has a teaching degree and has taught primarily English composition at his home in Indianapolis. He is currently attending Charlotte Law school to get his Master's Degree in law and ethics. Jim is staying at Value Place because it offers him a quiet place to live and study. He found rare wild roses in Japan one time and dug them up. They just bloomed two weeks ago, almost two years after he originally discovered them.