About this time I got a thousand dollars for our equity in the home at 1472 Westminster. Thus I paid off the bank and had about enough to build a service station on the corner that was left.
As the highway began to be built, it became apparent that we had a good corner for a service station. I became acquainted with several oil companies. One, Warren Wright of Independent Oil, was very friendly and accommodating. He is the brother of Estel Wright of American Savings and Loan. He even offered to help finance me. We got together and I signed a five year lease. I was to build the building. About the time I started the building, Sinclair Oil bought Independent, so I was now dealing with Sinclair Oil.
I had bought a used one-ton truck and as I drove to Farmington the morning I was to start building, I was stopped by a man whose car was stalled. I towed Jack Brown's car to the gas station and hired him to help me on the building. He was a good worker and when we were finished he ran the station for several years for Sinclair.
The building had cost me about $1200, besides my own work, and was leased for $42.50 per month for five years. From that time on life was a lot easier for me. The $42.50 was about equal to a week's wages, so while my fellow workers may receive four week's pay in a month, I got five, and one -- the rent -- was six, rain or snow, cold or hot, every month.
Early in 1936 I swapped the old silo by the barn to Mr. Parrish for a trailer house he had. I used the trailer to live in on several jobs after. We took the trailer to Carson City, where Al Brecker and I did the brick work on a Safeway store.
Then later, in August, I joined the bricklayers union and started working for Thomas B. Child Co. on the new Ogden High School. I think that was the largest brick job ever built in Utah to that time -- several million bricks.
About 1936 Warren Wright moved to Idaho Falls, taking over the distributorship of Sinclair in that area. He was always looking for suitable locations for service stations. He found a vacant, likely corner in Rigby, fifteen miles north, and talked with the owner, Mr. Doncan. I went to Rigby and got Mr. Doncan to sign a 90 day option for me to buy it for $1000. Then I negotiated a 15-year lease at $52.50 per month with Sinclair, so in 1937 I built a service station in Rigby. It cost me more than I expected, so after I finished it we moved the trailer to Aberdeen, Idaho, where I worked for six weeks building a potato cellar and warehouse for $90.00 per week, which gave me a little boost.
In 1937 I went to Nyssa, Oregon and worked for a Mr. Kloepfer to build the new sugar factory. This was late in the fall and I did not come home for Christmas, the only time I have ever been away from my Daisy at Christmas. After I got through at Nyssa, I worked a little while for Mr. Kloepfer's brother, who was doing the brick work on a ward house at Burley, Idaho.
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