An excerpt from Ch. 4 of Never Settled: a memoir of a boy on the road to manhood by Shawn D. Congleton

When I say I moved a lot, it’s not in the way you might think. After I tell people this, their next questions are usually, “Was your father in the military? Was he in the ministry?” Families who “move a lot” due to ministry or military don’t compare to my experience. Those that have served in the military, their families typically move every one to three years at most. For those that have served in the ministry, the average pastoral stay is about three and a half years. Actually, my family stopped moving when I entered high school. I only went to four schools during my high school career. That was an average of once per year. After we stopped moving. 

For many years we moved every couple of months. Sometimes more. I remember coming home from school having no idea that we were moving again and the car would be half-packed. It was our goal to finish packing and get out of town before the sun went down. As a child, this way of living was really not a big deal. It was all I knew. I never developed a friendship long enough for it to impact me too much when I left. I didn’t attach to anyone long enough to have issues with detachment. My life was lived on and off the road. 

We didn’t move with pick-up trucks or U-Haul rentals either. We moved with one car, loading as much as we could carry in one trip…

(This is not our car, but gives you a feel for what it was like. We have not been able to locate a photo.)

Our car was a 1973 Chevy Impala. We had a typical way of packing that was pretty efficient; all things considered. This required one of these classic large box cars from the sixties or seventies! On top of the roof of the car would be…