Continued from Yar-Craft After leaving Yar-Craft for the last time, I hitchhiked to Southern California, first staying with a friend in Pasadena, then with another friend who, with his sister, were assistant managers of an apartment complex in Buena Park, California. I don't remember the name of the apartment complex, but it was owned by Mrs. See, of See's Candies. For about a month, I worked at a fiberglass boat company in the City of Industry, California. Although their operation was the same as at Yar-Craft, and I should have been able to fit in just fine, they criticized everything that I did. Even when my way was better, being the new guy, no one would even consider it. Plus, they had a policy of completing a quota of boats before quitting for the day, I was working twelve to fourteen hours a day at a job that I hated, and with people who I would have probably hated if I knew them better. After a month or so, my friend decided to enlist in the Army. He gave notice to Mrs. See, who then hired me as assistant manager, along with my friend's sister. Unfortunately, my friend was not accepted by the Army, and Mrs. See would not hire him back. Oddly, he ended up moving back to Marinette, Wisconsin while I worked with his sister as an assistant manager. That was a short-term job, however, since my friend's sister found another job and, since they required a couple, that left me without a job. Seeing a help wanted sign at a body and towing shop just down the street from the apartment complex, I asked about that job, and was hired the same day to clean up around the lot, do some light gardening around the sides of the building, and delivering cars and trucks back to the owners after the body work was completed. Before too long, I was promoted to tow truck driver. Drivers earned minimum wage plus commission. However, new drivers drive the small trucks, and were relegated mostly to auto club calls, which paid a whole $1.60 commission, and his veteran drivers weren't much interested in retiring so I never made it past that stage, although I did occasionally get a real call. Driving tow truck was fun. I got to know my way around Southern California very well, as we not only did regular tow calls but, since it Brownie's was also a high-end body shop, a tow truck would often be sent to bring back whoever was transporting a car or truck back to the owner, and that could be more than a hundred miles away. In most states, if your call stalls along the highway, the police will mark it in some way, and if it's still there after a predetermined period of time, they will call a tow truck to take it away. California is different. In California, whenever a tow truck driver sees a car parked stalled along the road, they could just pick it up. The driver would call it into dispatch, and the tow truck dispatcher would notify the police about where the owner can find their car when they return to it. Since tows are calls that paid a pretty decent commission, we'd go out looking for stalled cars if things were slow, otherwise, and the idea was that if we were going to pick someone up somewhere, we wouldn't want to come back empty handed. Someone might run out of gas in Los Angeles and before they could get back to their car with a full can of gas, it might well be gone. When they call the police to find out where it is, they might learn that it's in a towing lot a hundred miles away, and that they are responsible for the towing charge, per mile, as well as storage. The practice of driving the highways looking for stalled cars was called trolling, and we could be very mean about it. Once I was coming back from Los Angeles, and I saw a car parked along the highway with a flat tire. Apparently, he didn't have a spare because I could see the guy rolling his tire down the embankment, no doubt looking for a tire repair place. Since there were two of us in the tow truck at that time, having just delivered a car to the owner, we looked at each other and decided to go for it. I pulled over in front of it and, as I was backing up to it, the back-up alarm would go off, alerting the driver to the fact that his car was about to be towed. He started waving his arms and running back to his car. I lifted it and, since there wasn't time to get the safety chains on before he got back to his car, we moved it about a mile down the road before pulling over and fastening the safety chains. There was such a thing as karma, however. While off duty and in my own car, I got a flat tire when my son and I were coming back from a Dodger's game, which was quite a ways away from my house. All I had was a star wrench and I couldn't get enough leverage to loosen a couple of the lugs on my tire so I decided to buy one from K-Mart, which was just off the freeway. When I got back, my car was gone. Since I was nearly a hundred miles from home, I figured that it was some Los Angeles towing company. It was late, so I knew the storage lot would be closed anyhow, so I called a friend to come get me. When I got home, my car was parked in my driveway with a note saying, "Gotcha." It was one of my co-workers. He swore he didn't know it was mine until he got back to the station, and that may or may not have been true. One thing that I didn't do, although I know that it was common practice among several tow truck drivers was to falsify damage reports. Before moving a car, we were supposed to go all the way around it, documenting every dent, scratch or imperfection that was there before we touched it. That would then be compared with any claims that the owner might make against the driver. It was common practice for drivers to fill this form out after towing the car, rather than before. In at least one case that I knew of, the driver hadn't fastened the safety chain, probably for reasons that I have noted above. The Volkswagen that he was towing came off the lift and was damaged fairly significantly when it ran up against a guard rail. Understandably, the owner was furious, but the damage report indicated that the damage was there before they had touched the car. Not good. I worked there as a driver for about a year and a half, but I was still doing mostly auto club calls. I ended up working for a very short time for Trane Home Comfort Center, then Hoerner-Waldorf. Continued at Trane Home Comfort Center