Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
I'm Tom Davis and we have with this Oklahoma author Alton Carter, and
Alton, first of all, welcome a boorn. How are you today?
You know, I am doing great, just headed getting ready to head out
of town for a little work retreat. But other than that, man,
life is wonderful. Just excited about the new year too. You know why
you're bringing with optimism. You're the author of a book called The Boy Who
Carried Bricks, and this talks a lot about your early upbringing. You're a
very successful man, but at one time it looked like maybe the fates did
not have that in the stars for you. Tell us a little bit about
you as a youngster. Well, as a young kid, we kind of,
you know, just had a rough start. I think mother just just
did not do a very good job of obviously picking men, and then we
just struggled to make ends meet. And so one of the unfortunate things for
me is I packed all of that those issues that I dealt with in terms
of being an abused child or a neglected child and angry, and so I
would pack every bit of that stuff and take it to school with me and
really give it to people who didn't deserve it. And so that's pretty much
how I spent probably the first eight to ten years of my life before DHS
stepped in and removed us away from my mom. Now you're going to be
talking to a group, by the way, called the Bartlesville Young Scholars,
coming up on January sixth at the public Library. I want everybody to know
that so as we go into your story a little bit more, they get
a little bit more of a feel of what to expect. Now, this
business about the bricks, how did this come about? Well, after we
were taken away from my mom, I did a little stay at my grandparents'
house and then I ended up at the Oklahoma Lion Boys ranch in Perkins,
Oklahoma. And it essentially the title came from our ranch. Dad made us
carry bricks when you got in trouble, amongst a few other things. And
so, you know, fast forward up until writing the book, and it
just to me seemed like a great title. Initially it was supposed to be
the boy who carries bricks, but I wanted to use that sort of story
to symbolize that, you know, one by one we can put some of
these things down and change how we feel about ourselves. So we changed the
title from the Boy who Carries Bricks to the Boy who carried Bricks. And
when we put that in the past, a lot of that has gone to
the past, because your future, through a lot of different trials and tribulations,
is very, very bright. You're a very successful man for having such
a tough upbringing. But I understand that. You know, your trouble didn't
end at that ranch in carrying bricks. No, it followed me, you
know, through till I graduated from high school and even thereafter. So I
graduated from high school in Cushing, Oklahoma, in a foster home that was
that was fairly decent. I mean, it was a good foster home.
They treated me, they did the best they could. So I graduated from
high school and Cushing, and then I went to college, dropped out of
college and was homeless for three years in still Water, Oklahoma. And that's
in the next book, Aging Out. But that was sort of my life,
and part of that was self sabotage. I mean, I honestly still
did not or had not healed from all the horrible experiences. So time after
time after time, I just self sabotaged, even though I had a million
people, you know, doing the best they could to support me. What
was your AHA moment where you said, I'm gonna break this cycle and I'm
going to try something new. I remember, I mean you talk about like
one of those epiphany moments. Yes, Stillwater used to have a day old
bakery and it was called the Wonderbread Stores what we called it. Well,
they would throw bread away into this dumpster that was old, and I was
digging the bread out of the trash can, eating it, and then I
remembered, like I had a flashback of a judge telling my mother she was
unfit to be a mother and she could no longer have her five children.
And from that moment, I made a promise to myself that a judge would
never tell me I'm unfit to be a father. And that was sort of
the beginning. And you know, life doesn't always the moment you decide that
you're going to be something different. It doesn't often get easy. In fact,
sometimes it gets harder. But I just persevered and with the support of
you know, so many people along the way, I overcame. I say
myself, to be honest, so well, it's like they say, sometimes
you know, your toughest opponent is the man in the mirror. Isn't that
the truth? Oh? Yeah, And I'm still working, you know.
And that's the good news is I believe that when you're unfinished as a human
being and you still have work to do, it just means you got time
to improve yourself. So that's what I'm working on every day. We're talking
with Oklahoma author Alton Carter and he's going to be the very special guest speaker
at the Bartlesville Young Scholars event that's coming up January sixth at the Bubble at
the Bartlesville Public Library. Now, you can get tickets online and you can
find it with this story at Bartlesville Radio dot com or contact Young Scholars.
It's twenty dollars for entrance, but I'm going to tell you right now,
for an extra nine bucks, you get to take home a copy of his
book, and that's at cost, and you know you don't want to leave
without it. Now, I want to get back to your track here,
because we hearned about the hard times and coming around the bend a little bit,
but you actually finished college and you had a job in law enforcement for
a while. Yeah, so finished ended up graduating from Oklahoma State University.
Late in life, I'd married and had kids and was my Goodness, probably
working you know, three or four jobs, and finally finally finished school while
I was in law enforcement, and then quit that and then went back to
school and finished school, and Mike Goodness have done six thousand things, it
seems like. But and I feel like this that every one of those careers
prepared me for what was coming next. And you know, now I find
myself well. I was a youth director at the first United Methodist Church for
thirteen years. Loved giving back, sharing my heart and soul with not only
students, but people in the community and mission trips, and then went to
Meridian Technology Center, went to Oklahoma State University, and now I worked for
an amazing company called Air Hygiene International. And it's just I get to use
my skills, my personality to influence people during training. So I'm their training
manager for all the new hires, and it is just absolutely I feel like,
perfectly designed for me. Well, folks, you know, we've been
hearing just the tip of the iceberg of the story of Oklahoma. Author Alton
Carter and you can hear the entire presentation coming up in Room A at the
Bartlesville Public Library that's upstairs January sixth, from two to four pm. He'll
talk more about his experience growing up in Foster Care about seventeen of them after
you know, being at the ranch and a few others too, and how
he took these positive steps to change his future. And of course, well
he'll talk about his books that he has coming Out, Aging Out, and
The Boy who Carried Brick once again. If you don't have tickets, get
them online and you can find the link at Bartlesville Radio dot com. With
this story, it's twenty dollars to get in, and for an extra nine
dollars you get to take home a copy of Alton's book. I want to
thank you very much for stopping and being with us today. You got a
million things to do and tons of places to be, but we really appreciate
the time that you spent with us here today. Well, absolutely thank you
for the invitation and the time and proper need to be on the radio.