Part 25 (2/2)
”Sorry, no children allowed”
”Would you give me the address?”
”There's no need, no children allowed”
”Would you just give me the address and let the owner tell us, 'No children allowed'?”
By this tiave me the address It proved to be quite near, so we drove out to the place and talked with the woman about twenty minutes Then we parked our trailer beside the apartment and moved in Then Ima really cried, but for a different reason She was so happy This proved to be the best place we had ever lived while in California And our landlady was a queen
I went back on the saa had sold out to Lockheed but the change was not noticeable Lockheed was looking forward to the time when the ould be ended and the company would have to operate with ed eht save the coh to be adopted and put into use, they would pay for it I subood, some bad In all they paid 72 for my ideas
Much of the time I was at Lockheed I worked in a departs for their protection against rust and salt water The oil was heated before it was applied to the parts Then when it cooled it beca units heated the oil, and it got to where the units were not working right So I asked the electricians to renored shot They didn't have to obeyfor the trodden ether unmannerly in the eyes of a Texas farmer I don't think they were really a bad sort,natural Andwith a Texas farht I could repair the heating units, but I knew that a country boy likeexcept just what , I repaired the units and got the thing to working like it should work Then in about three weeks the unfriendly pair of electricians came and notified me that they were ready to repair my hot-oil bathtub When I told them it had been repaired, they were surprised They didn't know there were other repairmen around They asked who did it and I told the as though they thought I was pulling their leg
Oneairplane nosecones for shi+p plywood luile parts to protect against breakage I orking in the hot-oil department and I had improved the efficiency of the department to the point where my job was easy and I had a lot of ti were inaccurate and had to be throay as scrap lunized their proble in , made of plywood and fitted onto a sawtable, that enabled me to saw out the pieces accurately and fast
The next day I used two hours of my spare time and sawedin 20 man-hours Not only that, my pieces fitted better and there were none to throay From then on, I sawed out all the pieces innosecones
One of the Lockheed supervisors saw a lot of the little efficiencies in my work and he told me that, after the war, if I would team up with him, we could ab” we could improve the efficiency of factories all over Ae of the hot-oil depart two men busy I soon had it so I could handle it alone Then I made more improvements and could loaf half the ti the plywood pieces, I was doing the work that four , and still had tithe those four months that fall, there was an awareness in the back of et back to Texas in December I had saved all the coupons I could, but it looked as though we allons short And since I hadn't worked six et coupons this tiasoline cae?”
He said, ”Sure have You can use it any time you want to”
I said, ”I don't want to use it, just want to borrow it”
We left it up in his garage But now that I had one, I went to the ration board and applied for gasoline coupons for it The lady at the board told allons would last six months and she issued me coupons for that amount And so, in just a few minutes I walked out of there a lot happier than I hen I walked in
Noe had plenty of coupons to take us to Texas But we still had a little probleallons and each one had ”stove” printed across the front So stove gas into Buick autoallon cans and then poured it into the Buick's tank after we got away from the station The Buick liked it It didn't know the difference
Now, you can be sure I didn't enjoy doing these little things which were id rules laid down by Washi+ngton Of course I didn't And I' the waters of the Red Sea close in and engulf thousands of Pharaoh's soldiers But we both did e had to do I was crossing a Red Sea 1200 miles across-and I made it, just as he made it I'll admit there's one little difference here, God told Moses to do what he did I'm not quite sure God was the one who told me to do what I did Maybe the devil ot back to the Royston farm that last time and stayed until we moved to Arkansas five years later It was the first of the year of 1945 and Uncle Jim had not yet started to have the papers fixed up for et the abstract in shape for un It looked as though he had decided not to let me have it I couldn't buy it without his cooperation So I finally e basis
CHAPTER 18
BACK AT ROYSTON, WORKED AT GIN AND FOR NEIGHBORS
Throughout all these years, as our children were growing up, we tried to train them to work out their own problems, answer their own questions, and make their own decisions One Sunday afternoon when the Willingha around the house to ask et some ice to make ice cream Anita was probably fifteen years old and Mary fourteen I asked Anita if she had a driver's license Of course she didn't have, but she could drive on back streets and be okay Then I asked her, ”And where is the ice plant?”
”It's on Main street, but we could walk and carry the ice to a back street”
”It's 14 ht?”
”Sure, that's not far”