My grandfather's name is William Robert Engle he and his wife Mary Edith Engle took care of me for six years that I lived in Lexington Kentucky. William or Billy Bob as everyone calls him is where I'm sure I derive my pleasure of work. Billy Bob was a product of the Great Depression and everything he did in his life reflected a desire not to go back to those days of hunger and desperation. He owned a construction company, and with the profits of the business bought  large portions of Lexington commercial property. Money making money.

The car he drives is never older than 2 years, has a yacht with three bedrooms two baths and three levels, has traveled to every spot on the globe and was married once. This is a life that most people will never live. They lack the drive.  He has three daughters Mary Gale, Nancy, and Robin. They were not products of the great depression, they were products of a father who had a ton of money.

Mary Gale bought jewelry from my father's store even when my parents were divorced. Loyalty to her sister? Her defense as I witnessed  was that it was a watch from a line that my Mom didn't carry  in her store, never mind that every department store carried it also. Mary Gale asked me to redesign a bracelet once using her pearls . The job never happened, because the first wave of war  waged on Soulmates and my family was slander from Nancy. "You can't trust him,...He rape me,...He's skipped town and I have no idea where he's gone,...He's on drugs,...His craftsmanship is second rate,...He's stolen everything and left me with nothing." Slander to every customer that asked about me at Engle and Morgan, and slander to every family member.

Mary Gale believed Nancy when she said I was a thief. She and Robin came into Soulmates when we first opened and asked about her pearls, into the safe I went to get the pearls and design ideas I had come up with. She listened to the ideas, then told me I wasn't going to be doing any of it. The most hurtful thing  however was that she counted the 5 dollar a pearl  of 14 pearls total to make sure that I wasn't cheating her.

I don't know much about Robin except what Nancy told me. Nancy said "She was always crying as a child to get attention, so one day when she fell off of a log pile and sliced her leg open and cried, no one listened.", and when she was living in Florida she fell into a lifestyle that wasn't good. I've always liked her, and never judged her like that.

Nancy as everyone jokes is the adopted one. Her true sister is the mother of Eminem. Thank God I'm not famous.

What does this all teach me?  Never let life be about money, do not control your children with money. Let life be about creating something of meaning for someone else. Create lasting objects that express the beauty of life, entertain the eye and pay homage to the Great Creator God. Live life with honesty and be always humble and never grovel.

I  have wonderful people in my life. My wife, my son, my father,  my in-laws, and every single person who walks into Soulmates that carries the belief of beauty is something to be honored. Without those people supporting me and making me believe I am doing something special for the world, I would be left with nothing but evil examples. So thank you people of love, and in some weird way thank you evil people for drawing a picture of life on the other side of the fence. That grass of evil is definitely not greener. Nor do I want to go there.

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