After the basic training home got boring real fast. I had went back to work at Bilo. One of the stockers, Bobby, I worked with was from Greenville SC. I got to know him well and started going to his church in Ware-Place. It was a Church of God, which was very different than the Southern Baptist. They did a lot of yelling and shouting. They also believed in lying on of hands and speaking in tongues. Usually when the preacher hit someone in the head, called lying on of hands, the person would pass out. They always came back the next week for the same even though each time the preacher supposedly healed them. They also believed in chanting in what they call tongues. It was supposedly the same like the apostles of Jesus used to spread the gospel to foreign lands. But I don't think too many people understand it. Usually one person will translate.
I became close friends with the family of Bobby. I decide to move to Greenville. One of his brothers suggested we rent a home together as a bachelor pad. I got a job on the North side of Greenville as a stocker at a grocery store chain called Ingles.
It leads to how I moved to Greenville and struck out on my own. How I searched more and more strongly for the truths about God.

I found entertainment after work playing a game called dungeons and dragons. We were living in a trailer park and there were about 5 or 10 of us that would gather almost every night to play. It required a leader whom would spin out the story line of some mythical adventure in pursuit of treasure. If in the story line the leader led you to meet someone it could be a fight or just information. Usually this was decided by the roll of some multi sided dice with many numbers on them. If it were a fight the based on you characters abilities and the roll of the dice you would find out if you won or died. Some people said it was the game of the devil and I believe it now that i think back on it. It was somehow completely in control of your mind. You felt as if you were living the story. It always involved demons and evil creatures from the worst of stories. Eventually our group broke up and the playing stopped. I met a young girl whom was only 14 that I started talking with. She was big for her age and when I first met her I did not know her age. I was 18 by this time. Four years is not much when you are both older but it made quite a lot of idle talk for friends and neighbors. We never did anything but talk and kiss, but the talk of the good going church people had it pictured like some evil sin. These same people were the ones telling my mom that I was Gay because I was sharing the home with my friend. I do not know why but she just kind of disappeared from my life. After about a year of sharing the trailer Tom, the young man I was sharing the trailer with decided to move back home. The trailer park was closing up the rentals there also. I found me a rental on the north side of Greenville near to where I was working. This began a time of at least one year of solitude and work. I lost contact with my friends completely. I would take off on the weekends and go hiking. Many times spending the night in the open. I made regular solitary expeditions to the top of Table Rock Mountain alone and pray to God. There were many trails that had few people on them at the higher altitudes. I still vividly remember being at the top of Pinnacle mountain trail when it started lightening. There is nothing like being in a storm where the discharge of the lightening bolts are coming from the clouds that are obscuring your view. I had planned to spend the night in one of the caves there but when the lightening started I became terrified. This trail is not easy to navigate in the best of conditions. My fear must have sharpened my senses because I ran, or rather mostly flew back down the trail all of the way to the car. What normally took about one hour I did in less than 20 minutes I know? My life went on like that for well over a year. After sometime I bought a bicycle, which I would use sometimes for weekend expeditions.
I had always wanted to go thumbing. That is where you stand on the side of the road with your thumb out and hope to get a ride. I had a few days off from work and decided to go to Nashville, I think there is a song that inspired this idea. I stood out on Highway 25 for about ten minutes before someone picked me up. I was thankful to God because the man was a preacher. He said he was on his way home to get his family. They had plans of going further north somewhere near to Tennessee. We went to his home and he invited me to eat with him and his family. We ate some wonderful fried chicken. Being a alone I did not eat much other than hamburgers and sandwiches normally. After that we all piled into his small car. He left me at an intersection of roads where is way went away from Nashville. I did not have to wait long when someone else picked me up and delivered into the city of Nashville. I did a little exploring and then made my way to the bus station. I did not ever have intentions to return the same way that I came. I bought a ticket to Greenville. I did not realize until a few minutes later it was to Greenville NC, not SC. I was able to exchange the ticket and caught the bus that night. The bus went across some mountainous roads. When the bus made its turns I was able to see the person sitting behind me through the window. We managed to make it out of the mountains without going over the edge. That was my first and last time to go hitch hiking.