One night while digging through some of my own family history, I came across a copy of my great-great-great grandfather’s diary. One the pages, aptly titled “I Shot a Man for Seventy-Five Cents,” instantly caught my eye. It’s not every day you find one of your family’s great patriarchs nearly killed a man over some pocket change.
Now this story is every bit as hair-raising as it sounds—and I’m half-tempted to share it—but for now let’s just say that it piqued my curiosity. For the better part of an evening, I pored over page after page of this diary, eager to know my grandfather and better understand what made him into the tenacious man he was.
