Alan Short was managing Ermal's Lumber and building business at the time. He asked me if I would like to work for them. I was glad to get a job with a paycheck every week. At the same time, I turned the houses over to Bill Bailey who was in the real estate business and was selling Ermal's houses. During the next thirty days, Bill had sold both my houses. I started out working for Ermal on a crew that was finishing the Hillcrest Christian Church parsonage. When this job was finished I was given a crew of my own. We, two other crews and Mike, built several in the New Edgewood Addition, several in the Oak Manor and the Bill Quigg home east of the golf course. This Quigg house is a story in itself, putting down ranch plank floors, then staining them so black the walnut plugs in the oak floor couldn't be seen and finishing a large family room with old barn wood without losing any of the moss or vines that clung to it.

While we were working at Oak Manor, Ermal died. This created quite a mess. His daughter, Ann, by his first marriage and his wife Dorothy, who was a likeable person but Ann was a horses' behind, were at each other's throats over what he left. I suspect the lawyers got most of it. Dorothy did have a lot in her own name that Ann couldn't touch, so it came out pretty good. We were working our last day on a house in Oak Manor, a Friday when in the middle of the afternoon Kermit Williams came by and asked if we would work for him, that the crew he had was unsatisfactory and he had let them go. This must have been the spring of 1969. Ermal had died in '68 and Ann was overseeing his building business.