Lonnie Mons did not have an easy life.

Known as L.P. to all of his friends (and not that he had very many of those), he looked back on his young twenty years and wondered what had taken him to this point in his life. Born in Barnwell, South Carolina he remembered vividly growing up with an empty stomach and tattered clothes.

One of the oldest of eight children he had learned at an early age that if you expected to eat you had to work. He had started out as a farm laborer at the ripe old age of six - when the plow was taller than he was.
 
He reached up to absently scratch his head, remembering the pain he felt as the plow handles would render him almost unconscious, blood streaming down his face in rivulets as he doggedly pulled himself back up and continued to plow, his small hands bleeding at the blisters lining his palms. But he never complained. Not L.P., as he rose each morning at 5 a.m. to begin his work in the fields until now at twenty years old he had dreamed of a better life.
 
Of course his family did everything in their power to squash this dream. They had given up, given out, given in. There had to be more in life than poverty he constantly preached silently to himself. Now he had found it. As he walked in the June heat to marry his beloved bride he was astounded at his good fortune. The year was 1912. Just two months prior, the Titanic had met it's tragic end, L.P. had learned the trade of well drilling and he was marrying into one of the prominent families in Millen, Georgia.
 
The Brown's were store owners. L.P. had visited a store on rare occasions, you had to have money and that was something he had seen precious little of but he had met and fallen in love with Sallie Brown and life suddenly took a drastic upward turn. His future in laws were giving him a run down house, a semi prosperous store and fifty five acres of choice farmland. What more could a guy ask for?
 
He would be the first of his family to actually be a property owner. No more groveling in the dirt for him. He had dreams of starting his own well drilling business and felt pretty confident in making an honest living. He was good at his trade, reputed to find water where others had failed. He dug artesian wells you see and was also reputed to be the best around. Yeah, L.P. Mons had big dreams and a plan to achieve them.
 
With a new spring to his step he almost skipped down the dirt lane to his new bride and a bright future saying a silent prayer of thanks for a strong backbone and a pioneering spirit to rival those of the wild west.

And who is L.P. Mons, you ask? He was my great grandfather, a man to be reckoned with and to be proud of, if I only had half his unyielding strength.