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Good morning, good morning, good
morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.

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I'm Tom Davis and we have with
this Oklahoma author Alton Carter, and

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Alton, first of all, welcome
a boorn. How are you today?

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You know, I am doing great, just headed getting ready to head out

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of town for a little work retreat. But other than that, man,

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life is wonderful. Just excited about
the new year too. You know why

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you're bringing with optimism. You're the
author of a book called The Boy Who

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Carried Bricks, and this talks a
lot about your early upbringing. You're a

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very successful man, but at one
time it looked like maybe the fates did

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not have that in the stars for
you. Tell us a little bit about

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you as a youngster. Well,
as a young kid, we kind of,

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you know, just had a rough
start. I think mother just just

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did not do a very good job
of obviously picking men, and then we

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just struggled to make ends meet.
And so one of the unfortunate things for

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me is I packed all of that
those issues that I dealt with in terms

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of being an abused child or a
neglected child and angry, and so I

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would pack every bit of that stuff
and take it to school with me and

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really give it to people who didn't
deserve it. And so that's pretty much

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how I spent probably the first eight
to ten years of my life before DHS

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stepped in and removed us away from
my mom. Now you're going to be

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talking to a group, by the
way, called the Bartlesville Young Scholars,

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coming up on January sixth at the
public Library. I want everybody to know

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that so as we go into your
story a little bit more, they get

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a little bit more of a feel
of what to expect. Now, this

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business about the bricks, how did
this come about? Well, after we

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were taken away from my mom,
I did a little stay at my grandparents'

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house and then I ended up at
the Oklahoma Lion Boys ranch in Perkins,

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Oklahoma. And it essentially the title
came from our ranch. Dad made us

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carry bricks when you got in trouble, amongst a few other things. And

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so, you know, fast forward
up until writing the book, and it

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just to me seemed like a great
title. Initially it was supposed to be

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the boy who carries bricks, but
I wanted to use that sort of story

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to symbolize that, you know,
one by one we can put some of

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these things down and change how we
feel about ourselves. So we changed the

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title from the Boy who Carries Bricks
to the Boy who carried Bricks. And

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when we put that in the past, a lot of that has gone to

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the past, because your future,
through a lot of different trials and tribulations,

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is very, very bright. You're
a very successful man for having such

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a tough upbringing. But I understand
that. You know, your trouble didn't

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end at that ranch in carrying bricks. No, it followed me, you

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know, through till I graduated from
high school and even thereafter. So I

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graduated from high school in Cushing,
Oklahoma, in a foster home that was

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that was fairly decent. I mean, it was a good foster home.

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They treated me, they did the
best they could. So I graduated from

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high school and Cushing, and then
I went to college, dropped out of

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college and was homeless for three years
in still Water, Oklahoma. And that's

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in the next book, Aging Out. But that was sort of my life,

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and part of that was self sabotage. I mean, I honestly still

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did not or had not healed from
all the horrible experiences. So time after

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time after time, I just self
sabotaged, even though I had a million

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people, you know, doing the
best they could to support me. What

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was your AHA moment where you said, I'm gonna break this cycle and I'm

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going to try something new. I
remember, I mean you talk about like

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one of those epiphany moments. Yes, Stillwater used to have a day old

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bakery and it was called the Wonderbread
Stores what we called it. Well,

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they would throw bread away into this
dumpster that was old, and I was

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digging the bread out of the trash
can, eating it, and then I

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remembered, like I had a flashback
of a judge telling my mother she was

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unfit to be a mother and she
could no longer have her five children.

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And from that moment, I made
a promise to myself that a judge would

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never tell me I'm unfit to be
a father. And that was sort of

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the beginning. And you know,
life doesn't always the moment you decide that

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you're going to be something different.
It doesn't often get easy. In fact,

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sometimes it gets harder. But I
just persevered and with the support of

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you know, so many people along
the way, I overcame. I say

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myself, to be honest, so
well, it's like they say, sometimes

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you know, your toughest opponent is
the man in the mirror. Isn't that

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the truth? Oh? Yeah,
And I'm still working, you know.

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And that's the good news is I
believe that when you're unfinished as a human

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being and you still have work to
do, it just means you got time

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to improve yourself. So that's what
I'm working on every day. We're talking

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with Oklahoma author Alton Carter and he's
going to be the very special guest speaker

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at the Bartlesville Young Scholars event that's
coming up January sixth at the Bubble at

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the Bartlesville Public Library. Now,
you can get tickets online and you can

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find it with this story at Bartlesville
Radio dot com or contact Young Scholars.

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It's twenty dollars for entrance, but
I'm going to tell you right now,

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for an extra nine bucks, you
get to take home a copy of his

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book, and that's at cost,
and you know you don't want to leave

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without it. Now, I want
to get back to your track here,

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because we hearned about the hard times
and coming around the bend a little bit,

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but you actually finished college and you
had a job in law enforcement for

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a while. Yeah, so finished
ended up graduating from Oklahoma State University.

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Late in life, I'd married and
had kids and was my Goodness, probably

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working you know, three or four
jobs, and finally finally finished school while

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I was in law enforcement, and
then quit that and then went back to

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school and finished school, and Mike
Goodness have done six thousand things, it

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seems like. But and I feel
like this that every one of those careers

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prepared me for what was coming next. And you know, now I find

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myself well. I was a youth
director at the first United Methodist Church for

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thirteen years. Loved giving back,
sharing my heart and soul with not only

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students, but people in the community
and mission trips, and then went to

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Meridian Technology Center, went to Oklahoma
State University, and now I worked for

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an amazing company called Air Hygiene International. And it's just I get to use

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my skills, my personality to influence
people during training. So I'm their training

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manager for all the new hires,
and it is just absolutely I feel like,

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perfectly designed for me. Well,
folks, you know, we've been

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hearing just the tip of the iceberg
of the story of Oklahoma. Author Alton

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Carter and you can hear the entire
presentation coming up in Room A at the

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Bartlesville Public Library that's upstairs January sixth, from two to four pm. He'll

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talk more about his experience growing up
in Foster Care about seventeen of them after

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you know, being at the ranch
and a few others too, and how

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he took these positive steps to change
his future. And of course, well

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he'll talk about his books that he
has coming Out, Aging Out, and

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The Boy who Carried Brick once again. If you don't have tickets, get

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them online and you can find the
link at Bartlesville Radio dot com. With

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this story, it's twenty dollars to
get in, and for an extra nine

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dollars you get to take home a
copy of Alton's book. I want to

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thank you very much for stopping and
being with us today. You got a

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million things to do and tons of
places to be, but we really appreciate

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the time that you spent with us
here today. Well, absolutely thank you

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for the invitation and the time and
proper need to be on the radio.