Cody and Colonel -- two untamed (and unsupervised) youths growing up in a town called Pink. With no great river to explore, the boys take to the skies, having reckless adventures in Baling Wire, the self-built airplane of Codys Pa. By chance, Colonel is drawn under the auspices of Charles Kickapoo, an Indian architect recently returned to finish a house in the woods north of Pink--his seminal work, a spiraling whim of a house, started decades ago but abandoned (or so he believes). On Colonel's journey of apprenticeship, he must struggle to maintain his boyhood love of the wild blue yonder while dutifully nurturing hidden artistic abilities, marked by a life-altering coincidence between his own folk architecture and Kickapoo's unbuilt house.
A modern-day Horatio Alger story that details the struggles of life as an entrepreneur and what it takes to grow a street stand in Brooklyn into a nationally recognized business. My narrative unfolds as I'm hiding from the Mob as a young boy after my dad tried to rob a bank in order to pay back a gambling debt or hunting submarines from the deck of a guided missile frigate as a Naval Officer. You're right there with me for the journey as we're strapped into a Navy jet tumbling out of the sky at 8,000' a minute or walking up to a small Brooklyn shop in the morning wondering if we'll find a seizure notice.I achieved the success I had dreamed about, was honored by my industry, and featured in the NY Times, ABC News, Science Channel, Backpacker Magazine to name a few, but was then caught off guard as my world suddenly collapsed. I lost everything and was forced to consider bankruptcy. Filled with a mixture of defeat and defiance I waged a seemingly Quixotic one man war against the multi-billion dollar student loan industry and did the impossible, I won! This precedent setting case was widely covered by the media and will likely make news again as it heads towards the Supreme Court. This is the story of how I got there. How a former Naval Officer with an advanced degree and the founder of a million dollar company, ended up in bankruptcy. 'Duct Tape & Baling Wire' dispels the myth about who suffers under the current heavy handed, very one sided, student loan system. My story shatters the straw man debtor that the banks have created, the mythical avocado toast eating barista with a degree in Sanskrit from a pricy east coast private liberal arts college. I did everything I was supposed to, played by the rules, and still found myself in bankruptcy court. My hope for this book is that it offers hope to those currently lost in the darkness and provides some insight into who really declares bankruptcy looking for a second chance.
