Home is where the heart is. Part 1.

Well, my time in the army ended, and I got shipped back home. I got to come home to your grandmother, and to good old [redacted]. After a few years at home, I decided that it was time for us to have a house. We had rented an apartment, but it was time for us to have a house of our own. So, I talked to my brothers. Now, my oldest brother was an electrician, and the next one down was a carpenter. My brother [redacted] was a heavy equipment operator. He used to be a real crackerjack with a crane. In fact, over the lunch breaks, he would take a split bucket, do you know what that is? A split bucket. It's this digging bucket you can put on the end of a crane. It has these jaws that scissor open, and you use it to dig. He used to put a coke bottle in the lot, and he could pick up that coke bottle with the split bucket, he'd pick it up without breaking the glass. In fact, he used to bet guys a dollar that they couldn't do the same. He made a lot of money that way, on his lunch hours.

Anyway, I talked to my brothers, and they said that they wouldn't build a house for me, but that they'd show me how to build it. So, I found a piece of land, and I took out a construction loan, and I started working. I'd work all day at [local chemical company], then I'd go to the house, and I'd work until it got dark. Once it got dark, I'd turn on my car's headlights, and finish up whatever I was doing. I'd work over the weekends, and I worked over my vacations, and after a while, I had the house all put up.