I was born on a family corporate farm in Arizona.

Actually I was born in a hospital up the valley from the family farm i grew up on. My parents were very interested in making sure we all understood where we came from. My first "job" if it can be called that was riding drag on a herd of cattle along the East Main Canal bank. For anyone who doesn't know what that is it means I got to ride a horse bringing up the back end of the herd. In that auspicious position you take on the aroma of your surroundings. Kind of hard to get too full of yourself back there. I think it was back there that I began to realize that I could do almost anything I set my mind to. I would gradually get promoted through the ranks to the office. Working as a field laborer, tractor driver, and mechanics assistant in the shop where we fixed and maintained wheel tractors, crawlers, cars, trucks, combines, cotton pickers, and all sorts of agricultural appliances. I have the scars to prove it. I suppose it was during my less than meteoric rise to a sort of white collar job that I developed the global perspective of an organization that a later boss up here would comment on when I was working for a winery. But more on that later. After my undergraduate career was complete I joined the Marine Corps. I was trained as an artillery officer. But when I got to Okinawa I was invited into the office of the Artillery Battalion Executive Officer. A diminutive gentleman who I think was all big 10 offensive tackle at Michigan in an earlier life "asked" me if i would like to be the battalion motor transport officer. There was, as with many such questions from superior officers during my tenure in the Marines, no real question mark on that question. So I became the battalion motor transport officer. I had to write fitness reports on subordinates, coordinate the battalion level maintenance for the headquarters and firing battery trucks, jeeps, and other wheeled equipment.I had to train battalion motor pool personnel, and serve on battalion staff. The most significant accomplishment for battalion motor transport personnel which we successfully accomplished was the deployment of the whole battalion during the entire month of November to a training base in South Korea for a live fire exercise. We got 'em there and we got 'em back. More later.