Jeb was born into poverty and had many obstacles suggesting he would fail in life. His ancestors simply had bad luck however and were not responsible for the environment he was born into. They passed on good genes however. He was born on a farm and loved it but hated the dirt perhaps because of the term "dirt poor." He was born in the middle of the great depression of the 1930s and his formative years were spent with the family subsisting by the work they did. It involved many chores such as milking, gardening, canning, planting, harvesting, taking care of animals, etc. There was a lot of cooperation in the family and they learned to do with little and do what was necessary to survive. Towards the end of the Second World War, the family moved to work in the defense industry. The boy was placed in a totally new environment and had to learn how get along with others. He found that it was a whole different world from that he had lived in. He had a reoccurring cyst on his neck that required many operations that caused him to miss a lot of school. It also left a nasty looking scar on his neck. As a result he began to fail in school as he got older. He felt socially inferior and reacted by dropping out of school and leaving home when he was fifteen. His father passed away and Jeb missed seeing him at the end which caused a lot of inward thinking by the boy. Eventually he got his life turned around, but it was not easy.