Jim,
Sorry to offend you..
We both worked really hard at lower-paying jobs for quite a while. In fact, the first year we were married I spent almost two months working one of my "regular" jobs I'd had for several years, running a combine for a custom-cutting crew--which of course involved being away from home for those two months. During that time I had to replace the rear-end on my 25-year-old Dodge pickup, which I'd already rebuilt the engine on--with one from a junk yard in Williston, North Dakota. That took care of a lot of my "free time" (and some income) during the 15-18 hour days of whacking wheat.
In other "careers" have spent time driving a tractor around and around a summer-fallow field in 90+ degree weather, working "worm's corner" on oil rigs, and repairing railroad tracks as a "gandy-dancer." Started making my entire living as a writer at 30, which still involved just barely scraping by--which we managed to do by moving to a very small town in central Montana where we could rent a house for $150 a month.
But whatever.
