“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
These words by film character Andy Dufresne in “The Shawshank Redemption” are what kept one displaced veteran going as he made a 30-mile trek on foot across south Georgia — as he searched for work and help to reclaim his life.
“Somewhere along the line, that popped into my mind,” U.S. Army veteran Brian Taylor, 59, told Fox News Digital.
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“I’m not holding up no sign. I just can’t do that. I want a job. I want to work. It’s pride, I guess. I don’t really want to be on no government dole. I don’t want to be on anybody’s dole but my own. I want to work.”
Taylor left the Army in 1983 and has faced personal challenges, including losing his mother and also losing his wife and children due to choices he made involving alcohol, he said.
Taylor said he lost his way and bounced around the country, but always managed to find work, whether at a paint and body shop, campground or convenience store.
“I worked in a grocery store,” Taylor said. “I’ve painted. I’ve just done multiple jobs. There’s really not too much that I cannot do.”
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Taylor said he’s never felt like he deserved to use his veteran’s benefits — and that he’s been homeless since 1999.
“I just drifted off,” he said. “My life was in turmoil.”
When his time ran out at the place of a friend where he was staying in Ohio earlier this fall, that was a turning point for him, Taylor said.
“I didn’t want to spend the winter in Ohio,” Taylor said.
He sold an old car he owned and bought a bus ticket to Valdosta, Georgia.
But his money ran out — and in mid-September, he hit Highway 84 to Thomasville, where he had once found work five years ago.
“The first day I walked 10 miles and got caught in one hell of a rainstorm,” Tyler said.
“I found a building off the side of the road. I…
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