"I used to spend a lotta time worryin' that I was different from other people ... But I found out everybody's different, the same kind of different as me."

Not too many years ago, American people were struggling. That time was called the Great Depression. Families didn't have much money. Mothers and fathers couldn't find jobs to buy food, medicine, or warm clothes for their children.

That was the time when Denver was born, on a cold January day on a cotton plantation in Louisiana. He was so small that his granddaddy would carry him in the front pocket of his overalls.

Denver's family worked as sharecroppers picking cotton on The Man's plantation. The Man let them live in a shack on the plantation. They had no electricity. They had no lights. They had no water. They were as poor as they could be.

Denver's family didn't have a car. Sometimes they rode on a big wagon pulled by mules. But they usually walked.

Most of the food they ate came from their garden—corn, potatoes, carrots. The milk came from The Man's cow. At Christmas, The Man would give them a pig so they would have some meat.

Even though he was a little boy, Denver worked with the rest of his family. He fed the chickens. He milked the cows. He picked wild blueberries.

There wasn't money for toys, so Denver would make toy trucks from old boards, with bottle caps for the wheels.

One day, Denver saw The Man's son Bobby riding down the dirt road on a brand-new bicycle. It was shiny and red! Denver had never seen a bicycle. He wanted one so much! He asked The Man, "Can I do extra chores for you so I can earn enough money to buy a bike like Bobby's?"

"Denver," The Man said, "if you pick one hundred pounds of cotton, I will buy you a new bike."

Denver got up before the sun even came up the next morning and picked cotton all day, sweat trickling down his forehead and into his eyes. Just as the sun was setting, he took his pillowcase full of cotton to The Man's barn and put it on the scales. It only weighed five pounds!

Day after day, he worked in the hot sun and picked cotton until his hands and knees were so sore and swollen that he could not pick anymore. The Man's son Bobby felt sorry for Denver and thought, I'll pick some cotton too and sneak it into Denver's sack in the barn. With a friend helping him, Denver finally had one hundred pounds of cotton.