I began writing "The Life and Times of Bud Coleman of Jefferson County, Alabama," soon after my father died. The book was easy to write because my father accomplished so much in life. From growing up in a junkyard in Powderly, Alabama, during the Great Depression to the founding of two large communities in western Jefferson County, a chain of sixty-five video rental stores, and numerous other retail establishments, my father was an eyewitness to history. I was there for much of it, and for the parts that I wasn't, my father was never reluctant to tell me about it. The first of two books, Book One covers life in Powderly, Alabama, just after the Great Depression, the development and operation of Coleman Lakes and Rock Mountain Lakes in western Jefferson County, Alabama, in the 1950s and 1960s, and life in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama in the early 1960s. There's a lot of history in this book that can't be found elsewhere.