I’d left off with the art classes in high school, choosing to take biology and chemistry rather than art.

Years later, when through a series of misfortunes, including some questionable decisions of mine, I became homeless, I began to draw again, during the endless Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and the gatherings afterwards.

At one of these places, the Perkins on Overton Parkway in East Memphis, I practised drawing portraits. I’d taken some pointers from a job I had, which was modelling for the artists at the Memphis College of Art.

Again, years later, after I’d made a long journey from homelessness, by dint of hard work and saving, into the working class, a daughter came to my wife and me. She has proven herself a young artist, and is developing her own art. I give her pointers, but she is very highly motivated and talented, I think. Oh well, we’ll see.