I added two more air and water towers. Mechanics put in a new type of hydraulic hoist and a complete high-pressure greasing outfit. Near the rest-room building, startling under its new coat of paint and shining inside with added luxuries, was erected a steel shed to house car-washing and polishing equipment.
I hired Bones and a couple of youths to help, and business went ahead with a bang.
One of the youths, Bradley, was a pretty smart mechanic, and I knew most things about the inside of a car. We didn’t reckon to take on any big repair jobs, but we could handle the day-today adjustments that came in; but once we did handle three cars that got involved in a smash.
All day long cars kept coming in, and I was on the jump from six in the morning to seven at night. I fixed up a night shift as I found I was turning away business by closing down at seven. I got an old man and a youth to handle the night trade, which wasn’t heavy, but kept coming, three or four cars an hour.
I had just finished checking the accounts and I found I’d cleared nine hundred dollars after three months’ work. I ran over to the house to let Clair know we weren’t broke yet.
I found her in the kitchen, a cook-book in her hand, a puzzled expression in her eyes.
She found the job of being a housewife tougher than I found my new job. She had started off with little or no knowledge of how to run a house, how to cook, but she wouldn’t hire a help. She said she wanted to learn to be useful, and it was time she knew how to cook anyway. I didn’t dissuade her, reckoning that after a while she’d get tired of it and throw in her hand. But she didn’t. For the first two or three weeks we ate some pretty awful meals. I have a cast-iron stomach so I didn’t complain, and after a while the meals got better; now they were pretty good, and improving all the time.
She kept the house like a new pin, and I finally persuaded her to let one of the youths do the rough work, but the rest of it she continued to do herself.
Hi, honey,” I said, breezing into the kitchen. “I’ve just audited the books. We’re nine hundred
bucks to the good: that’s clear profit, and we don’t owe a cent.”