"Sorry, no children allowed."
"Would you give me the address?"
"There's no need, no children allowed."
"Would you just give me the address and let the owner tell us,
'No children allowed'?"
By this time I knew she was anxious to get rid of me, so she gave me the address. It proved to be quite near, so we drove out to the place and talked with the woman about twenty minutes. Then we parked our trailer beside the apartment and moved in. Then Ima really cried, but for a different reason. She was so happy. This proved to be the best place we had ever lived while in California. And our landlady was a queen.
I went back on the same job, building boxes. Vega had sold out to Lockheed but the change was not noticeable. Lockheed was looking forward to the time when the war would be ended and the company would have to operate with more efficiency. They encouraged employees to submit ideas that might save the company money and speed up work. If an idea was good enough to be adopted and put into use, they would pay for it. I submitted a few ideas, some good, some bad. In all they paid $72 for my ideas.
Much of the time I was at Lockheed I worked in a department where we coated aircraft parts with oil and other coatings for their protection against rust and salt water. The oil was heated before it was applied to the parts. Then when it cooled it became a tough, durable coating. Electric heating units heated the oil, and it got to where the units were not working right. So I asked the electricians to remedy the problem. They mostly ignored my request. After all, who was I, certainly not a bigshot. They didn't have to obey my request. They treated me as though I were a rug for them to wipe their feet on. And after having trodden me under foot they walked away in a manner altogether unmannerly in the eyes of a Texas farmer. I don't think they were really a bad sort, maybe just native Californians acting natural. And maybe they were not quite at home when dealing with a Texas farmer who was also acting natural.
Now, I thought I could repair the heating units, but I knew that a country boy like me might get into trouble with the union if I did anything except just what my card said I could do. So, one day when no one was looking, I repaired the units and got the thing to working like it should work. Then in about three weeks the unfriendly pair of electricians came and notified me that they were ready to repair my hot-oil bathtub. When I told them it had been repaired, they were surprised. They didn't know there were other repairmen around. They asked who did it and I told them. But they didn't believe me. They left quietly, acting as though they thought I was pulling their leg.
One month the box-building crew was packing airplane nosecones for shipment. They had two men, each working ten hours a day, sawing plywood lumber into oddly shaped pieces to fit snugly against the fragile parts to protect against breakage. I was working in the hot-oil department and I had improved the efficiency of the department to the point where my job was easy and I had a lot of time to loaf.
Many of the boards the men were sawing were inaccurate and had to be thrown away as scrap lumber. I recognized their problem and set about to find a solution. Then, working in my spare time one afternoon, I built a jig, made of plywood and fitted onto a sawtable, that enabled me to saw out the pieces accurately and fast.