FILTHY RICH

When I went to Brunswick, Georgia, I didn’t know a thing about putting money in the bank or how to keep money, because I just hadn’t had any money.  I had been helping Dr. Lawrence in the dairy making six dollars a week, and that was big money.  But I’d give Mamma the majority of it, and I’d have a little spending money.

I don’t remember what they paid at the shipyard.  But seems like I came out of welding school there doing regular production welding - what they called plate welding - making something like $1.10 an hour.  And the real good welders that came out of school, they directed them to the shell, which is called shell welding, which is welding the outside of the ship together, and they made like a dollar and a quarter.  But steam pipe welders made $1.75 an hour, and if you welded galvanized you got ten cents an hour bonus.  I didn’t know it at the time, but it was because it would eat your stomach up - and I never knew that until several years later, when I had to learn another trade.  They didn’t tell me anything about it.  So I wound up as a steam pipe welder, and welded the galvanized because that packed $1.85 an hour, and no expense.

I wasn’t interested in anything but working.  So I worked seven days a week.  Saturday I got paid time and a half, Sunday I got double time.  And my pay would be greater than the checks were worth. Paychecks were good for just so much money.  They were yard issued.  So they’d pay me with two checks.

I didn’t have any way to spend any money, and didn’t know where or how to spend money, because the only spending money that I ever thought of was to have a drink and a Nab, and that was the greatest thing in the world.  So I kept it in my pocket.  I got to where I had so much money I didn’t know what to do, and I spread it out on my bunk bed where I lived, just to look at it.  God, I don’t know, fifteen hundred or two thousand, three thousand dollars, you know.  And never had any money in my life. 

I didn’t know what to do with it.  I never thought about banking or nothing else.  So I was filthy rich.