I would pull away as far as I could from my father, and think luxuriously, awake sometimes till dawn.
I hated school so that I ran away. For the first time in my life, but by no means my last, I hopped a freight.
I was absent several weeks.
When I returned, weary, and dirty from riding in coal cars, my father was so glad to see me he didn't whip me. He was, in fact, a little proud of me. For he was always boastful of the many miles he had travelled through the various states, as salesman, not many years before. And after I had bathed, and had put on the new suit which he bought me, I grew talkative about my adventures, too.
I now informed my father that I wanted to go to work. Which I didn't so very much. But anything, if only it was not going to school. He was not averse to my getting a job. He took out papers for me, and gave me work under him, in the drying department of the Composite Works. My wage was three dollars a week. My task, to hang the thin sheets of composite, cut from three to fifteen hundredths of an inch in thickness, on metal clips to dry.
In the Composite Works I discovered a new world—the world of factory life.
I liked to be sent to the other departments on errands. There were whirling wheels and steadily recurring, ever-lapsing belts ... and men and women working and working in thin fine dust, or among a strong smell as of rubbed amber—the characteristic smell of composite when subjected to friction....
And these men and women were continually joking and jesting and making horse-play at one another's expense, as rough people in their social unease do.
They seemed part and adjunct to the machines, the workers! Strong, sturdy, bared forearms flashed regularly like moving, rhythmic shafts ... deft hands clasped and reached, making only necessary movements.