When the unemployment ran out, my dad drained his retirement. I didn’t fully understand what this meant, but I heard my mom saying it didn’t matter–he wouldn’t live long enough to retire. That lasted for a few months, but he wasn’t budgeting, and the majority of the money went to rent and the bar. My dad worked at the same place for over twenty-five years, and the retirement money barely lasted a year. That’s when my dad had the great idea of starting his own business. He didn’t graduate from high school, and he said he’s not going to bother getting a GED at this age, so he thought that they only way he would find a job was by starting his own business. My mom said that he should at least apply to a few jobs, drop a resume off at Jiffy Lube or Les Schwab, but he said it was impossible without a highschool diploma. I offered to take the GED for him. I figured my 6th grade education would be able to pass. He wouldn’t hear of it.
The next day, he came home from applying for a business license downtown. He was going to call his business S&K Trucking, for Steve and Kristy. My mom balked at the name and said she would have no part of this. My dad figured that my brother could help him on trucks and I could balance the books. When his business license came, he went around to different business that used big rigs, and landed a job working on Goodwills trucks.