About the author

Carl Jones, Sr., was born into poverty in Utah during the hard times of the 1930s. Hampered by an autism spectrum disorder, he had trouble memorizing facts in school, yet his recall of events in his life was superb. His struggles with formal schooling led him to become a rambunctious student. After moving with his family to Montana, he was expelled from tenth grade for bad behavior.

For the next several years, he kicked around the state, breaking wild horses, climbing power poles for the Forest Service, being a bouncer in a bar, falling trees, blowing out stumps with dynamite, learning the watch-making trade, driving large logging trucks, and working as a high scalier on the walls of a dam, among many other jobs. Energetic and ambitious, he quickly learned there was no substitute for integrity and hard work. Discovering a talent for art, he created and displayed many works. He also found success in the real estate business, buying, renovating, and renting multi-unit dwellings. Later, he twice won the Story of the Year Award from the Idaho Writer’s League and worked as contributing columnist for a local newspaper. He has written and self-published 14 books in numerous genres, including how to make money in real estate, children’s books, a volume on health and weight loss that was based on his own successful loss of sixty-five pounds, a book outlining how the American Constitution was borrowed from other early American colonies' documents and from those of other countries, and a treatise on Thomas Jefferson’s religious beliefs centered around a book Jefferson wrote, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, now known erroneously as the Jefferson Bible. Carl's first novel, A Part of Me: A Love Story, is inspired in part by his own life. His writings are largely aimed at encouraging people of all ages to think for themselves and to see things as they really are.

Carl returned to formal education later in life and overcame continued struggles in the classroom, graduating from West High School in Salt Lake City and attending Salt Lake Community College, where he excelled in machine shop and mechanical drafting. He also studied psychology and art at the University of Utah, real estate at Utah’s Westminster College, and liberal studies at the University of Oklahoma. Landing a job with a large company in the defense industry, he worked up the ladder from laborer, to draftsman, to engineering technician, to computer programmer, and finally to computer systems analyst. He retired mid-life to write and pursue other interests.

Now 78, Carl and his wife, Vicki, the love of his life, live on an isolated Montana property in a log cabin overlooking a lake near a trout stream, a site they call the Enchanted Forest, after the setting of his stories for children. They have five exceptional, grown sons, all of whom have exceptional mates, eight grandchildren, and two great grandchildren—and many unofficially adopted children and grandchildren. He is lovingly known as Mr. Jones, even by some of his own children. He lives by the conviction that people will become as great as their dominant aspirations, or as small as their controlling desires. He believes people must be willing to suffer the discomfort of doing unfamiliar things for a little while, if they are ever to be good or great at anything. He also bears in mind that you can’t take most things with you when you die. He says, “I like to write in such a way that readers, young and old, don’t even realize they are learning.” His books are available at most outlets and at www.Grampajonespublishing.com.

      

   

His favorite poem that he seems to live by, 

        It Couldn't Be Done

                  by Edgar Guest

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,

    But, he with a chuckle replied

That "maybe it couldn’t," but he would be one

    Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.

So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin

    On his face. If he worried he hid it.

He started to sing as he tackled the thing

    That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you’ll never do that;

    At least no one has done it";

But he took off his coat and he took off his hat,

    And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.

With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,

    Without any doubting or quiddit,

He started to sing as he tackled the thing

    That couldn’t be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,

    There are thousands to prophesy failure;

There are thousands to point out to you one by one,

    The dangers that wait to assail you.

But just buckle it in with a bit of a grin,

    Just take off your coat and go to it;

Just start to sing as you tackle the thing

    That "couldn’t be done," and you’ll do it.