We first moved onto Rose Street in Bellflower, California, near Lakewood Boulevard. Our landlord and her husband were in their 90’s. Once our roof began leaking. Her husband and his older brother came to replace the roof themselves. We thought there would be a death up there on the roof. But the roof was completed, no one died, and the leaks stopped. Another time, the bathroom faucet began leaking. Her 90+ year-old husband made that repair as well. He did not bother to shut off the water supply when replacing the faucet. Water poured everywhere and well beyond the bathroom and out into the living room. Once he finished up, we spent the next several days drying out our floors.
Once, as we were leaving the store, someone had a puppy they were giving away. She was fluffy and cute, and she came home with us. We named her Scamper. She loved people and became well known with the kids around our home. We were known as Scamper’s parents. We later moved next door to an identical house but with a different landlord. We could remove our things from one home and place them in the same spot in the other house. Our new landlord had a rule about pets, and Scamper was not allowed in the house. But he liked Scamper and looked the other way when she made it inside. He had a catering business that catered for our wedding, and we often worked for him on his catering gigs to make extra money.
Kathy had a career in teaching. I needed to find a career, too. I wasn’t particularly interested in college, and my first inclination was to become an apprentice auto mechanic. My parents strongly discouraged this. Dad’s lack of formal education caused him to be treated with a bias his entire life. He wanted to be sure I didn't face similar biases and wanted me to be college-educated. My skills in math became a strong factor in my choosing accounting. My mother had been a bookkeeper and encouraged me to investigate accounting. This was a good direction, and I did well in classwork. After a few classes at Cerritos Community College, my education was completed in Long Beach at California College of Commerce. I rode a bike between home and school, crossing Signal Hill with huge uphill and downhill rides. The round trip was about fifteen miles. I managed to get a full-time accounting job at Pacific Valves in the evenings while still attending school full-time. I got my first exposure to computers there. Working with a computer was an unusual experience back then. I realized right then that computers would become an important part of my career. I have stayed current in technology since. The job was ideal because they needed me to process some documents and answer questions for keypunch operators (a lost term today). They needed me to be there full-time but couldn’t keep me busy full-time. So, they told me I could do homework once my duties were completed. Not only did I have the perfect time and platform for homework, but I had graduated from school already, having two years of work experience.
My accounting career has taken care of us, and I have developed some skills that have brought me success. I was especially good with companies that had problems to solve. I would identify the problems and correct the problems to help with future success, and then move on to another job in another city. This was typically a four-year cycle. I have also learned that I am better at solving problems than running day-to-day operations. While I was good at it, the stressful demands would eventually affect my bipolar disorder. I have often wondered how I would have done if I had chosen another career direction. Kathy then reminds me that it doesn't matter now.
Kathy had an elementary education major from BYU. The state of California would not acknowledge the elementary education major and issued her a temporary teaching credential until she finished a major that they would acknowledge. She chose a fine arts major and attended Cal State Long Beach to finish up. Certainly, classes like "The History of Rock and Roll" helped her be a better elementary teacher. She took an art class that had a very different instructor. He had very specific tastes. Each student had to do assigned artwork, and when turned in, the instructor would grade it. An F would count as 50%. But he often refused to even grade the art piece and gave a 0% grade, lower than an F. One time, the assignment was to make a nude sculpture. This was a dilemma for Kathy as this just didn't fit our religious standards. Kathy asked the instructor what he hoped to accomplish with the sculpture. He gave her the skill set he hoped to see applied. Kathy decided to do a sculpture of a boy fishing on a rock. She turned it in, expecting a 0. Actually, everyone in the class except her got a 0. Only her sculpture got the only passing grade.
We wanted to be parents so very badly, but for some reason, pregnancies wouldn’t “stick”. There were several miscarriages and then difficult times between pregnancies. Then, there were the questions at church and from family about when we would start trying to have a family. The Church asked us to become foster parents to a teenage girl from a Native American reservation. She was with us for part of the school year. We were too young and inexperienced, and she was troubled. We were just not up to the job, and when we received a $200 phone bill caused by her phone calls around the country, she was placed in another home. After four years, Kathy became pregnant with Melissa and carried her full term. We decided that Kathy would leave her teaching career to become a career homemaker, at which she also excelled.
While I was still in college, we decided to buy a house. As you can imagine, with a beginning teacher’s salary and my very slim salary from my job after school, the budget for a house was very limited. Dorothy Benson, a longtime family friend from church, became our realtor. And she came through with a fixer on Artesia Court in Bellflower. It was tiny, with only 900 square feet. 300 feet of that square footage was an apartment that we rented out for $75 per month, half of our house payment of $150 per month. The house needed a lot of work. We replaced the electrical service. (Kathy’s father was a professional electrician.) We replaced the roof, carpets, paint, and landscaping. We created a laundry room. It was a cute little house when we were done. We bought it for $17,500 and sold it two years later for $30,000. When Melissa came along, we needed more room. By this time, I had finished school, and we started house hunting again.
We started our search in Mission Viejo, California. We found a house we liked and qualified for financing, but I backed out because I couldn't see spending $55,000 on a home. We found another fixer in Bellflower for $32,000. Someone had started a flip and ran out of money, leaving their project unfinished. It had 1,400 sq. ft. We had to install a toilet before the bank would close on the purchase. (There was no toilet when we bought it.) Its large yard was overgrown with ivy that was several feet deep. It had a huge avocado tree. Before the purchase closed, they could not find the garage door keys. The day after closing, the keys to the garage were magically found. The garage had been filled with several years’ worth of garbage. The owner had canceled the trash service. The garage was filled top to bottom, front to back. At least he hadn't been living there; it was mostly construction trash. We hired a dump truck that made several trips to empty the garage. After a lot of work, we made it into a nice home. We ended up selling it for $55,000 eighteen months after the purchase.
Kathy taught for several years in Watts but was burned out fighting with a new school principal who thought that only African American teachers were capable of teaching African American students. He took every opportunity to criticize and embarrass her. She had been excellent with the kids, but the administrator didn't want her in that neighborhood. She then spent two years working as a buyer for a manufacturing company. Then, when the pregnancy finally worked out, plans were made for her to change to a career as a homemaker.
I found a job with a CPA firm in Bellflower upon graduation. I specialized in dairy clients. My relationship with management did not go well. Many of their clients had poor quality accounting work done in the past, and I spent time fixing their books to meet nationally recognized standards. They did not appreciate the extra time spent fixing inaccuracies. After a year, I moved to Stauffer Chemical Company, where my dad retired. His dad had retired from Stauffer as well. I enjoyed Stauffer and learned a lot. After a few years, I was up for a promotion and a transfer to a chemical plant in South Carolina. I went to Delaware to interview for the position. They made an offer, but the terms of the offer were vague, and I did not accept. I later realized that I had ended my promotability at Stauffer. I went looking elsewhere.