I began writing The Life and Times of Bud Coleman of Jefferson County, Alabama, soon after my father died. The book was easy to write because my father accomplished so much in life. From growing up in a junkyard in Powderly, Alabama, during the Great Depression to the founding of two large communities in western Jefferson County, a chain of sixty-five video rental stores, and numerous other retail establishments, my father was an eyewitness to history. I was there for much of it, and for the parts that I wasn’t, my father was never reluctant to tell me about it. The focus of Book Two is the businesses that Bud Coleman founded and operated during the last three decades of his life. Within the book is the most detailed history of the video rental business in Alabama in existence, stories about the beach condo boom and bust in the 1990s and early 2000s, and the founding and operation of a printing business in Bessemer, Alabama.