Last week Rooted told you the story of meeting Clarence Jones and hearing the struggle of living on the streets. Clarence made it out of the hospital after a 24-hour observation, and is now staying in a $30-per-day motel on the north side of Austin with his wife Lisa. This week, Rooted photographer Peter Gaunt heard the story of Clarence’s life before Austin.

In the time that I’ve spent getting to know Clarence he’s let me in to a world that I’m glad I can share with the readers of Rooted. He’s told me stories of what it was like for him before Hurricane Katrina and what it’s been like since his relocation to  Austin.

“Life down in New Orleans was not really a hard thing.

I grew up in a project but I didn’t grow up in some of the worst projects that was in New Orleans at the time I was growing up. With me, I didn’t care nothing about the ways of the projects, as we call them, as much as I looked at the things that the project offered me. I’m a bad motor scooter, I ain’t afraid of nothing. I guess that gave me my courage. But in time, I started to realize that it was something that was helping me more than I was hurting myself. I used to do some stupid-ass things when I think about it now. But back then that was the decision to make.

Right before Katrina, life for me was just everything sweet. I had a little boy, I had a car, I paid rent on a two-bedroom house. Like I said, car notes, the basic living. I had a good job, I used to make $450 or $500 a week doing my carpentry work. I was content. I had got to that stage right there right before the storm.

Before the storm — way before the storm — in my youth you could say I wasn’t that nice. I growed up in the streets, since I was five years old. I had two jobs when I was five years old. I used to hustle bottles — anything to make a dollar — or cut grass. As the day came, whatever I could do, if anybody needed a helping hand, anybody needed somebody to help them with anything.

I lived with my mama all the way until I was 13, then I left my mama’s house and said I was a man and I wasn’t going back. When I was 17 I went to penitentiary for armed robbery. The first time I got four years and I was locked up like 26 or 27 months. I got out then and I met my oldest little boy’s mama. I was like 19, going on 20. And I raised five kids until they were just about grown. My oldest son is 34 years old now, going on 35.

After meeting his mama, like I said, and raising kids I had jobs, you dig. I provided. I was a provider. That’s what I called myself, a provider, because I’m able. I wasn’t afraid to accept life and put weight on my shoulders of other people. I was responsible enough because I was intelligent enough to know how to survive. I know that I did a lot of things that was wrong even though I know I did a lot of things that are right.

This is a circle, this is a process to get to the next phase. I don’t think nobody in this environment picture themselves being in this environment. Life throws curves at you, but if you don’t have a will and a desire to do better for yourself you’re going to be stuck like Chuck.”

We’ll continue our story on homelessness in Austin next week.

Peter Gaunt photographed, wrote and produced this story.