I drove back through Hamlin and took Ima and the kids to San
Angelo. They stayed there with Ima's folks and I went to
California alone.

At the employment office in California, I told the lady I didn't want to get into trouble, so I wanted to tell her the whole story and then ask her what I should do. She told me that wouldn't be necessary, and added, "Texas and California are two different countries; I'll give you another slip. We need you out here." I took the slip—my third one—and went back to work at the same job at Vega, through the same office where they kept my first slip when I quit and went back to Texas. I gave them this new slip and I guess they were happy, now they had two of my slips. Anyway, I went back to building boxes for them.

All that running around had cost me quite a bit of money. I needed to make up for some of the loss so I worked ten hours a day at my regular job, got off at five in the afternoon, ate supper at the company cafe, drove seven miles and went to work at another plant that belonged to the same company. This second job paid time-and-a-half, and I could work an hour or all night, they didn't care which. The work was there to be done and laborers were scarce. I usually worked until ten o'clock and got to bed by eleven, so I wouldn't lose too much sleep. However, on Saturdays I worked all night.

Then one day I got this telegram from Ima that read something like this, "Can you meet me at the Union Depot on Thursday, March 19th at 5:45?"

Well, on my way down to my other place of work I had noticed a telegraph office. So I stopped in one afternoon and sent Ima a reply. After all, she had asked a question; the least I could do was to answer it. But I didn't see any need to send her a long message. I figured we could talk with each other after she got to California.

Now, if her telegram had said, "Meet me at a certain place at a certain time on a certain day, I could have replied, "Okay." But since she put it in the form of a question, I replied, "Yes."

I wrote her name at the top of the form, my name at the bottom, and handed it to the man behind the Counter. He looked at it, and then he read it, which didn't take long, and turned to me and asked, "Is this all?"

I told him, "Yes, that's enough."

And it proved to be plenty because, on that appointed day at the appointed hour and at the appointed place, here came that woman with those three kiddos, and they all looked mighty good to me.

I don't think I ever got around to telling Ima how proud I was of her for having learned so fast. Only three short months before, she couldn't take three kids to school a few miles away in Burbank. Now she had learned how to take those same three kids halfway across this big nation of ours.