Stories
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From my house on Winfield Street it was just a few blocks down to San Jose Avenue which turning south, quickly led to 280 all the way down to Stanford with light traffic, where I would take the Sandhill Road exit and go in the back way. I believe it took either forty or fifty minutes and used my green Opel, seventy miles an hour all the way. One morning on Sandhill I ran into a road-rage confrontation, both guys out of their cars. I slammed on the brakes and through my car into a partial skid heading for them, before straightening out and avoiding them. But it was enough that they both jumped back into their cars. Had to be there by 7:30 in the morning.
We met at a bungalow where we sat around the break room until we got our assignments for the day. I got my own Stanford panel truck. She would give me a list of buildings I was to patch and then I was on my own for the day. Plaster patching can take more than one coat and so sites were revisited on a second and third day allowing for drying. This was a summer job. I may have worked a
couple of months. Good pay.
Eventually I got a helper, a farm kid from the Midwest some-place like Kansas. He was doing some kind of international studies, and on scholarship. For me it was someone I could talk to about intellectual subjects. The job was fun. I had a lot of holes to patch, and I could use any technique I wanted. I was fast; she liked that; and thus I had job security after the first day.
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