A Family

After our return from Las Vegas, we heard rumors that there were going to be a lot more of the Broadway stores to work on very soon and they were scattered all throughout the western United States. But in the meantime, we began working on the more commonplace jobs; apartments, stores and office buildings.

And I had to return to the routine of going to apprenticeship classes on Saturdays. I only had about 4 months left to serve and they would fly by quickly. Finally, an invitation to a graduation dinner was received and we showed up to get that important piece of paper that made me a Journeyman…to my surprise, there were dozens more graduating apprentices at the dinner than there had been in class? It turned out that some apprentices had “connections” and I didn’t.

Now that I was a journeyman, I could take my foreman’s wages without any problem at all. Those who had been upset at my role as an apprentice/foreman now had nothing to complain about. And the extra money was great…we had become a family with the arrival of Denise! And that extra money meant that we could start looking into renting a house and get out of the cramped apartment.