I grew up way back in the mountains in the southern part of the country. We were really out in the sticks, so to speak, and we really didn’t have much connection with the outside world. We were really close to our family and our neighbors, but other than that we didn’t have much communication with anyone else or with most modern conveniences. For instance, we never really had a furnace system when I was growing up. We usually just used a woodstove and a fireplace for heating our little house. And that was always enough heating for us. Sure, sometimes when the outside temperature really got cold we had a harder time staying warm, but we really didn’t even know what we were missing, seeing as how we’d never had an electric furnace or an oil furnace to start with! And if it makes you understand just how far out from civilization we actually were, I didn’t even know that air conditioning even existed until I was almost 14 years old. I had gone into town with my dad on one day during the summer and the weather was really hot. I remember wishing that we had something that could help with cooling us down on the way to town. Then when we got to the store in town, I walked in and the store had their A/C running! I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I felt the cool air blowing from those A/C vents! I never wanted to leave that store on that hot summer day. It was that moment that I knew I would grow up and move away off the mountain.