When I graduated from high school I was having such a good time playing tennis that looking for a job was the farthest thing from my mind. If I wasn’t the laziest kid in Seattle, I had to be at least the second laziest.

My Kraut mother, on the other hand operated on the theory of work not eat not. So, she almost physically pushed me out the door to go and put in an application. So, since she worked as a salesperson in ladies shoes at the Bon Marché, I figured they wouldn’t hire a second person from the same family.

My well-planned ploy hit a snag when the Bon called me to go to work. Curses. I started as a pick up boy for the delivery department. It was my job to push a wheeled cart, which was really a box on wheels, to the various departments to pick up the merchandise that had been sold and bring it to the delivery room. It was my job at that point to separate the merchandise as to breakable or not. The soft goods went on a belt for the wrappers to do their thing.

The breakables, china, hardware, groceries and anything else that needed to be packed went to the packing department.

This was just at the time that King Edward quit as King of England. There was a very English lady who worked in ladie’s lingerie who was quite vehement. I think she felt he should be put to death.

I did that job for about a year when the checker in the packing room was killed on the highway. He had run out of gas and was walking for gas when he was run down.

His job fell to me and for several years I had to check everything that had to be packed. I had to tap every piece of china and glassware with a pencil to make sure there were no cracks. I had to check prices to make sure they agreed with the sales clerks’ slips.

At that time I was the only checker, in the only packing room, in the only Bon Marché.

All this I did for the princely sum of about 65 cents an hour. In the meantime I had met and married my first wife, Ethel. It was possible to live on that.

My neighbor worked in a ship yard and he told me he could get me into the Boiler maker’s Union and I could go to work there. He could and he did get me in and I went to work as a ship-fitter’s helper. As I remember, the wage was $1.25 an hour just almost double what I had been making.

I think I worked as a helper for about two months when there was a sign on the wall saying that helpers could apply for a test to become journeymen. I asked the lead man if I could take the test. He said I wouldn’t be able to pass it but I was welcome to try. The test was so simple I passed with flying colors. Voila, I was now a full fledged journeyman boiler maker. I don’t remember the money difference between helper and journeyman, but it was better.

I worked as a journeyman for a year or so at Seattle Tacoma ship yard. One job I did was positioning the racks for the depth charges on the fan tail of a destroyer. Previous workers set the two racks separately, tediously setting the port and starboard racks. I asked the lead man for two I beams that would reach across the ship. I set them at the right heights, set the racks, which were prefabbed in the shop, at the proper places, set the proper brackets to hold the racks. It turned what had been about a three week job into about a week.

Shortly after this I decided that I wanted to work in a yard that was closer to home. I went to work at the Lake Union Drydock Co. This was the yard from which I quit and was drafted in the army. But that’s another story that I’ll continue later.