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There were maybe fifteen students. The teacher did not like me. He apparently agreed with the secretary that I did not belong there, and now my being there, I guessed they were right. It was a difficult class. Each student had a desk with a screen to catch parts should they go flying, which they did for the guy next to me and to a lesser extent myself. One might have to spend a lot of time on one's hands and knees looking under the desk for minuscule parts that sprung over the screen. Edwardo gave me three watches that he got from his father, who he got from a friend of his. They were to be serviced and oiled. The most interesting story was that watch makers over the ages routinely, when servicing gold watch-case time-pieces, would scrape a bit of the gold out of the inside of the back cover, so that over the life of a watch, the cover could become ethereal in thickness, unbeknownst to the owners of course.
I quit the watch-making class vindicating the secretary and my teacher probably in April. Tell the truth it was too difficult for me. I never did get the watches I was given finished, and gave them back all in pieces; not happy there. I was pursuing my oil painting. Around this time Edwardo decided I needed a job. Edwardo was like that and he kept me working part-time for many years. He started working for his father in a seven story hotel (Hotel California became popular at the time) down-town on Fifth Street between Market and Howard. They were remodeling the whole thing top to bottom. It had been a cheap rooming hotel. The architect was redoing it in the fashion of a European tourist hotelery with wall paper and redoing the original bathroom fixtures.
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