Early Life
Born in Gainesville, Texas, Buck grew up in Dallas and excelled in geography, at the cost of "utter failure on all the other subjects of that limited Dallas curriculum." While still a child, Buck began collecting birds and small animals, and tried his hand at farming before getting a job as a cowpuncher. Accompanying a cattlecar to the Chicago stockyards, he refused to take the trip back to Texas, and spent the rest of his days supporting himself on various jobs while seeking adventure. In 1911, he won $3,500 in a poker game and decided to go overseas for the first time, leaving his wife and setting out for Brazil. Bringing back exotic birds to New York, he was surprised by the amount of his profits. Trips to Singapore followed, and he traveled the world for 18 years, until the stock market crash of 1929 left him penniless. However, friends lent him $6,000 and soon he was back to his profitable work.
Read more about this topic: Frank Buck (animal Collector)
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“No two men see the world exactly alike, and different temperaments will apply in different ways a principle that they both acknowledge. The same man will, indeed, often see and judge the same things differently on different occasions: early convictions must give way to more mature ones. Nevertheless, may not the opinions that a man holds and expresses withstand all trials, if he only remains true to himself and others?”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Many older wealthy families have learned to instill a sense of public service in their offspring. But newly affluent middle-class parents have not acquired this skill. We are using our children as symbols of leisure-class standing without building in safeguards against an overweening sense of entitlement—a sense of entitlement that may incline some young people more toward the good life than toward the hard work that, for most of us, makes the good life possible.”
—David Elkind (20th century)