Bingowings said:

Me I would make Anakin a navigator on a Spice Freighter.

He uses his latent Force abilities to plot courses quickly and avoid danger.

He sends his money back to his wife and sister who live on his brother-in-law's farm on a Kansas cornfield planet.

He saves Obi-Wan and listening to his tales of the Force drops everything (including his wife, who he doesn't know is already pregnant) to become a Jedi.

But he gets drawn into an affair with the Queen of Alderaan.

Near the end of the story Darth Vader visits the farm and kills Anakin's wife forcing Kenobi, Owen and Beru to flee to Tatooine.

This is pretty much the story that was implied by the OT. Why Lucas didn't go with this is beyond me.

However, I would go back further into the past, making it 40 years before the OT while Anakin was a teenager. I've been working for some time on a prequel rewrite, and holding so closely to the 20 year time gap feels like it's rushing the story and limiting the audience's imagination of implied events.