Interview: Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com
Jeff Bezos: Well, I had what I considered to be an idyllic childhood. I mean, I had two parents who loved me incredibly. I also had a tremendous amount of contact with my grandparents -- my mom's parents. In fact, I spent all my summers on my grandfather's ranch not far from where we're sitting right now, not far from San Antonio. And, I spent three months every year from the age of four to the age of 16 working on the ranch with my grandfather, which was just an incredible, incredible experience. Ranchers -- and anybody I think who works in rural areas -- they learn how to be very self-reliant, and whether they're farmers, whatever it is they're doing, they have to rely on themselves for a lot of things. My grandfather did sort of all of his own veterinary care on the cattle. We would, you know, repair the D-6 Caterpillar bulldozer when it broke, and it had gears this big, you know. We would build cranes to lift the gears out. This is just a very common sort of thing that folks in far away places do. I think it was a great experience.
via achievement.org
