Well, Monday morning came and I got up and followed dad into the construction job site at the DuPont plant.  It was rather huge.  The main plant was already in production of yarn and cut rope.  The raw material (DMT) was hauled in, so DuPont decided to build a plant next to the yarn plant so as to not have to haul it in.  The DMT plant was on its way.  Two of the main buildings were already up, but the piping and machinery in these two were just being set up.  Pieces were still being put into the building with cranes and two more buildings were just coming out of the ground.  So there was still a lot of work to do.

Dad was a carpenter supervisor by now and he had an old black man who supervised a crew of laborers to assist dad’s team of carpenters.  But to back up a bit I have to get me onsite, so I had to stand at the gate, once again and wait for the Chief Field Engineer to come out and get me signed up, get my brass, which I’ve told about before that I pick up and drop off each day at the gate.  I was given a hard hat, a plumb bob and a 12 foot measuring tape measured in tenths instead of inches.  That tape measure has screwed up a few carpenters who stole them not realizing there were only 10 tenths on the foot.  They should have seen if they need more than ten inches it just wasn’t there.  Anyway, he got me signed up, my paperwork was turned in and I was taken to the Field Engineers shack.  I stood in there and got my first mention of “Bill”.  The guys were asking were Bill was.  What did I care?  I’d just got there.  I didn’t know who Bill was.  But it was a first impression.  Later I found out he was the boss’s brother and he was out on a drunk.    This is a common malady of construction workers. 

I was assigned to work as a head chainman with Tim.  He was a black guy.  He was fairly smart.  He knew how to do the job as a Party Chief.  The Party Chief is in charge of a two or three man crew and saw to the correct measurements being laid out on the site for whatever needed building.  I liked Tim, but for the life of me I can’t remember my co-workers name.  I can’t even remember what he looked like.  That is funny how the mind works.

I don’t remember which building we were working on.  I just know it was the north east building of the four main ones.  Most of the footer and pier had been completed and the steel skeleton of the building was going up.  So we worked on laying out where the forms were to go so they could pour the skirt around the building so the floor could be poured. 

I worked hard that day and it didn’t take me long to get back into the groove.  You see, I had done this for several months before the Army and while in the Army I was taught to use a theodolite, which is an instrument for measuring both horizontal and vertical angles, as used in triangulation networks.  We used it in the Army to set up the launching trailer to true north.  But a little more versatile instrument called a transit was what we used.  The scope on it would completely flip from front to back to back shoot lines.  This instrument could set angles within very small fractions of an inch in several hundred feet.  Now a days it’s all done with GPS which affords an even more precise measurement.

Anyway, I could bore you do death with all this technical stuff, so let’s get back to something more interesting.  After work that day dad took me back by the guy’s house where he was renting from.  This guy took be across the road to a trailer he had parked on the inside of the curve on Hwy 17 in Winnabow, NC.  I liked that better than the outside of a curve.  People don’t tend to run off a road to the inside of curves.  The trailer was an old one.  It was something like a ten by forty, two toned green, but it was solid and clean.  He wanted $100 a month for it or something close to that.  So I paid him the first month and threw my stuff in and settled in that night.  Dinner was something simple.  I think I rode on down to Bolivia to the supermarket there and got something I could heat up real quick.  Time for bed came and I was ready to crash.  The room was so small that whoever built the trailer tried to make give it a little panache.  The bed was an oval with a flat end for the head board.  Put a sheet on that rascal, why don’t you.  But it surprisingly sleep very good. 

The routine for work hours was a bit different at this job.  We worked four ten hour days and had a three day weekend every weekend.  I could live with that.  The days were getting longer and I still had some sunlight at the end of the day.  Julie and I decided I would have Mondays to myself to rest up.  But the rest of the week, I would race home to the trailer and shower and jump in the car and go to Wilmington, which to her house was about forty minutes.  I’d roll down the windows as long as the weather was good and let the air blowing through the car dry my hair.  It was always dry when I reached her house.  Some evenings she might work late, but her mom and I would sit and talk or watch a little TV.  I would sometimes go over to Gibson’s Department Store where she worked and walk back home with her.  The store was in sight of the house where she lived just the other side of the railroad tracks on South Kerr Ave. 

Julie’s mom was growing on me.  Cinnie was sixty three but full of life and spunk.  Nobody got anything over on her.  She didn’t have a car nor had she ever driven a car.  She’d normally take a bus to where ever in town she needed to go or one of her friends would take her.  This job was to become mine from the time I got home until she died. 

She made some of the best homemade biscuits you ever laid your lips on and the same thing goes for anything she cooked.  Their little house sat at the foot of Franklin Ave even with the kitchen window.  On Fridays or Saturdays I would come over early and she’d fix me biscuits and bacon or sausage and we’d sit there at the table in front of the window and watch traffic go by.  It wasn’t as busy a street as it would get in later years, though. 

So far as taking her places I thought it was good to get her out of the house and we’d going riding downtown for her to pay her bills and I got to learn who she was to other people around town.  For instance, I took her to Western Auto one day to pay her bill.  We’d already gone by Home Furniture down on the end of Market Street right between Front and Water Street.  As we entered the store the folks behind the big counter up front gave her the big hello Mrs. Barnes and all.  She walked up to the counter while I wandered over to look at the tires and had my ear to the conversation.  She told them she was there to pay her bill.  They pulled out the books.  They thumbed through to Cinnie’s account and looked up at her and said that her payment this month was to be $60.  She looked back at them and said, good, I’ll give you $40.  There was some dismay from the lady, but Cinnie insisted they’d get $40.  Not wanting to turn her down, they took the $40 and then asked her did she need anything today.  I thought to myself from that conversation this wasn’t the first time this negotiation of payment had happened. 

At a later time I went back with her and she allowed me to buy two tires for my car and she bought a TV for her house.  I paid her back each month to pay my share on those tires.  She was so good to me.

One incident that happened was when we sat under a tree in the front yard talking one afternoon.  She asked me if she could see the pictures in my wallet.  I took it out and showed them to her.  In the midst of these pictures was a picture of Vickie.  She looked at it and asked me who she was.  I told her and she looked back at the picture and with her fingers on the corners now, she tore the picture up.  Then she looked at me and said you won’t need this one anymore.  I thought to myself, well thank you ma’m.  And that was the last of that.

Before Julie and I got married, I took her to see my parents up in Small.  She’d never been before.  It was a two hour drive.  I went by way of Hwy 55 to 306 and thought I’d like to see how she liked driving fast.  I took the Polara on up and let it roll.  When I passed a hundred she started screaming and I kept going till I hit 120 and then let off.  She screamed the whole time she didn’t like it.  Oh well, so much for adventure.

During that visit, I took her around to meet some of the community people I grew up around.  The most interesting visit we had was when we stopped at Tiny Walker’s country store.  It had only a front door and maybe one front window and a back door.  Both were open.  There were no lights inside, which made it a bit dark, but nothing to make you want to turn the lights on.  While sitting there talking to Tiny a shadowy figure darkened the doorway and came in.  As the person walked out of the doorway the shadowy figure became visible.  It was Vickie.  What a surprise that was.  She just stood there looking at Julie, Tiny and myself.  Finally Tiny looked over at her and asked her was there anything she do for her.  She said no there wasn’t and stood there a couple of more minutes and then left.  It was like she finally realized that there was another woman who took precedence over her in my life and any notions of getting me back were gone.  In never saw her again.