Working for a living Part Two: Working like crazy; a tale of despair and redemption: January 1981 through December 1996.

 

Kathy and I working for Executive Express in Newport Beach, 1987

Medivan, spring - summer 1981

Well, after I had visited Janne in November of 1980, I decided to follow his lead and move to California and pursue my own adventure.  I was 25 years old, with no particular ties to Sweden, no kids and no wife.  I was a free man!  So, at the end of January 1981, I was back in California!  First things first; I needed a California Driver’s License, which, after two tries, I got sometime not too long after I arrived in CA.  Not long after, I ended up in a little apartment at Parkside La Palma Apartments; 1000 East La Palma, in Anaheim.  This was a little studio apartment, fully furnished, and I think I paid $325 a month for some 500 square feet.  Armed with my new CA Driver’s License and my new Social Security Card (see below) I had found a little job through the local newspaper The Orange County Register, driving for a non-emergency medical transportation service called Medivan, which was located close to the Orange Circle in the city of Orange, earning $3.25 an hour.  So, working full-time, 40 hours per week, that would equate to $130 per week, $520 or so per month.  With taxes, I probably cleared some $450 per month, and after I paid my rent, I had $125 left over, a king’s ransom!  No problem, I lived on baloney sandwiches and Cheerios cereal, and since I was using the Medivan as my ride, I didn’t have to pay for gas, and the sunshine was free!  I had bought an old 1968 Ford Mustang, bile yellow with a 283 V-8, and life was good!    

So, you might ask, how does a Swede get a full-time job in California, after being there for just a few weeks?  Well, my buddy Janne had given me some clues; the first thing I needed (besides a driver’s license) was a US Social Security Card.  No problem, I went to the Social Security Office in Anahiem, and when I went there, I was one of only three people waiting in line (later I went back to the same office, probably around 1995, and it was packed; hundreds of people in the same waiting room I had visited in early 1981)!  The social security person asked me why I needed a social security card, and I had been instructed by Janne to say that I was a student, and I needed a Social Security Card in order to open a bank account to transfer money.  So, I got my Social Security Card, and I still have the same card, with the number typed by a typewriter.  Those were the days!  Armed with my new Social Security Card, I went to Medivan for an interview, and lo and behold, I got the job!  Back then, life was indeed different…  Later, after I married Kathy in 1982, I applied and obtained the much sought after “Green Card”, which is a permanent resident alien card, which allows an alien to work and live freely in the US; i.e. to become a legal alien (alien nevertheless).  After more than 40 years of marriage, I’ve finally convinced Kathy that I didn’t just marry her for the Green Card!     

Armed with a recent Thomas Guide street map of Los Angeles and Orange Counties and driving the Medivan van, I would pick up patients to take them to their doctors’ visits, or drop them off at various medical appointments.  We transported a lot of patients to dialysis, and other scheduled therapies.  For my lunch, I would eat at Del Taco down the street from Medivan, usually getting a Taco salad; a cup of refried beans covered with grated cheese and some grated lettuce, yum!  I went to all areas, mostly economically disadvantaged, but I didn’t know any better, and I never had any problems!       

A 1980 Thomas Guide, covering Los Angles and Orange Counties.  This was my bible for driving for Medivan, and also later when Kathy and I drove for a couple of delivery services.  The Thomas Guides would be updated every year, and there were also Thomas Guides for San Diego, the Inland Empire, and other areas.

 

Claus Justesen’s Union 76, summer 1981 through sometime in mid-1982.

I probably stayed at Medivan for a few months, until I somehow met Claus Justesen, a transplanted Dane who owned a Union 76 gas station at the corner of La Palma Avenue and Tustin Avenue in East Anaheim. 

Claus Justesen’s Union 76 gas station was on the north-west corner of Tustin and La Palma.

 

Claus hired me to run the front of the station, while he had a mechanic that ran the service part.  Claus’ Union 76 was a full-service gas station, which meant that the customer stayed in his or her car, and we had a staff that filled up the cars.  As we filled up the cars, we cleaned the car windows, and we had a little trick where we tapped on the car hood, to signal to the customer that we wanted to check the oil, and hopefully sell a quart or two, and we also filled up the tires as needed.  At Claus’ Union 76 I met my friend John Kieser, who would become my best man at our wedding in September of 1982, when I married my wife of more than 40 years, Kathy.  My word, time does indeed fly! 

Claus Justesen’s Union 76:  Clockwise from top left; filling up a car, me and John Kiser in front of John’s Chevy pickup truck (we are both wearing the obligatory Ocean Pacific shorts), undersigned showing off my uniform, and John and I working on something in the backroom.

 

The work at Claus’ Union 76 was very interesting, I had never worked in a gas station before.  A lot of filling up cars, a lot of oil changes, fixing tires and tire changes, and minor repairs.  I think that by this time I was making $5 an hour, so a great jump from Medivan!  I also remember working six days a week, and if I remember correctly, Claus paid me overtime, and with the extra money burning a hole in my pocket, I bought my first pickup truck!  This was a 1979 (or 1973, I don’t remember) yellow Chevy C10 long-bed, with some 100,000 miles on the odometer.  Awesome!  This was of course to be followed by a whole string of pickups over the years; a Datsun, a few Nissans, Dodge and Ram trucks, and even a little beige Toyota!  Gosh, I love my pickup trucks! 

Nevertheless, sometime in early 1982, I got tired of working the pumps, and I got a job working for a construction company, JT Alton, who did all kinds of construction work.  However, after two weeks, I was let go, apparently due to a lack of work (the construction industry is notorious for feasts or famine).  I should have known; the first week I worked 4 days and the second week just 3 days, so the writing was on the wall…  I crawled back to Claus and begged for my old job back, and he reluctantly hired me, but I think it had created some bad blood, because sometime in mid-1982 he fired me, why I don’t remember!  Now, a little word about being fired; I don’t think that it is a bad thing to get fired from a job, especially early on in one’s working life, because one can learn a lesson from the experience, and hopefully get better at working and keeping a job.  Of course, if we continue to get fired (that was the first and only time for me), that’s probably not a good thing…

Norco Delivery Service and Mr. Pete’s Trucking; mid-1982 through mid-1986.             

After Claus fired me, I had the idea that I wanted to drive the big trucks, so I signed up to get my Class 1 driver’s license with the help of Parker Truck Driving school, which, if I remember correctly, was also located in Anaheim.  (According to Google, there is still a Parker California Driver’s License School, but I don’t know if there is any relationship).  After a two-week crash course in driving a tractor-trailer, I went to the California Department of Motor Vehicles (or DMV, as we lovingly call it), did the driving test with one of Parker’s tractor-trailer rigs, and lo and behold, got my Class 1 license!  (Funny, I never did use my Class 1 driver’s license to drive a big rig…)          

I found an ad in the Orange County Register (I’m sure) that Norco Delivery Service in Anaheim (and they are still in business;  www.ndssocal.com) were looking for drivers.  I had no idea what they were doing, but I needed a job, and I got hired as a contract delivery driver, working on a percentage of what the runs would pay, initially using my Chevy C10 pickup truck.  This was not unlike the “gig” economy of today, where the Uber and food delivery drivers get a percentage of what the run pays (of course, out of that percentage that the driver makes, he or she has to pay for all of the fuel, all the maintenance, the insurance and ultimately the depreciation of the vehicle).  In addition, I formed my own little company “Mr. Pete’s Trucking”, because I had a vanity license plate that read “MR PETES”, so that’s how the name came about.  With my own little company, I got a bit better percentage than some of the other drivers, so it made sense.  Not long after I started, I had convinced Kathy to quit her professional graphic design job at McMulllen publishing, and she joined Norco Delivery Service as well, doing the same delivery work (and making some 3 times as much money, at least initially).  Using our trusted Thomas Guides, we would make deliveries all over LA, Orange County, the Inland Empire and San Diego.  A usual day for me would be 8-10 deliveries, driving some 300-400 miles per day, and 2 to 3 runs from Orange County to LA every day.  Since Norco Delivery Service was a 24/7 operation, we were also on call for evening and night deliveries, which, since there were only 5 or 6 of us doing these kinds of deliveries, meant that at least one night per week we would be out doing late evening deliveries.  At 300-400 miles per day, our vehicles would easily clock in at 60,000 miles per year, and they needed trading in every three years of so.  Even so, the money was good, especially since there were the two of us doing deliveries, so good in fact that we were able to buy our first house in the spring of 1984 in Anaheim, just up the street from Norco Delivery Service. 

Kathy and myself driving for Norco Delivery Service in Anaheim CA.  This picture is from 1982, judging from the Datsun/Nissan Diesel King Cab, which I had bought to replace the thirsty Chevy C10 pickup (the Datsun/Nissan got 36 miles to the gallon on the freeway).  I still have that hand truck you see in the back of the Nissan bed.  To the right is my little Toyota compact truck which we had bought used.  We are both wearing the Norco light blue shirts.

 Executive Express and Mr. Pete’s Trucking; Mid-1986 through January 1997.

Sometime around mid-1986 both Kathy and I jumped ship from Norco Delivery Service, and started working for Executive Express in Newport Beach, CA, over by the John Wayne airport.  Executive Express had been started by James "Jim" Myers when he was in his early 20s, and Jim was a great guy, and I really enjoyed working for Jim.  (Unfortunately, Jim passed away unexpectedly in 2015 when he was just 55 years old from a heart attack).  I don’t remember why we switched, maybe the percentage was better, or maybe the Norco on-call got to us.  Nevertheless, Executive Express was, at least in regards to the courier and small parcel delivery, much bigger than Norco Delivery Service, which meant that Executive Express had many more drivers that could share the load of night and weekend deliveries.  The work was pretty much the same as Norco Delivery Service; we worked on a percentage of what the runs paid, and still drove our 300-400 miles per day, and I would usually go to LA from Orange County three times per day (which got old).  We all had company-provided CB radios, which the dispatchers used to dole out more runs, depending on where we were located (this was before the cellphone era).  Again, the money was good, so good in fact that we had saved up enough money to buy a franchise, a Little Professor Book Center, but more on that story below.      

Myself and Kathy driving for Executive Express in Newport Beach, CA.  I’m guessing this picture is from 1987.  The dress code at Executive Express was a white shirt and black tie for the guys, I think Kathy is wearing a white polo shirt with a Bolo tie.  On the grey Nissan to the right you can see my vanity license plate “MR PETES”.  In the blue Nissan to the left I think you can see my forever hand truck, that I still have to this day.

 We both stayed at Executive Express for over a decade; I kept working there when I was running the bookstore (see below), and when I went back to school at Irvine Valley College and Cal State Long Beach (finally graduating in December 1996).  I finally quit in January of 1997 when I got my first engineering job, and Kathy stayed until late 1998, when our son Matthew was born.  During this time we went through a bunch of vehicles; Nissan and Toyota pickup trucks, and two Mazdas, a 323 (which clocked some 270,000 miles) and a Protégé (which clocked over 300,000 miles).  My word, that was a lot of driving!      

Little Professor Book Center / North County Book Center; late spring 1988 through April 1990.

This is the tough part, and it is not easy to write about, but I’ll try to tell the story the best I can.  When Kathy was going to Cal State University Fullerton (or CSUF) in the early 1980s, she had frequented the first Little Professor Book Center in Orange County, which was located across the 57 freeway from CSUF.  Little Professor Book Centers was a franchise operation out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and, since both Kathy and I loved reading, around early 1987 we contacted the Little Professor home office in Ann Arbor to inquire about the franchise.  At the height of its operations, Little Professor had 120 franchises all over the US, and in 1987 they were trying really hard to open more stores in southern California.  In order to get my feet wet, in the fall of 1987 I had started working part-time at the Little Professor Book Center in Anaheim Hills, which was franchised by Ken and Ross (unfortunately, not too many years later, Ken and Ross closed their Little Professor, when the food anchor Albertsons closed their doors, and the foot traffic dried up.  One of the saddest sights I’ve ever seen was the closed Little Professor Book Center in Anaheim Hills; it looked like they had just decided that day to close the doors, and the remaining inventory was still on the shelves, and the date on the last newspaper signifying the closing of the store). 

Sometime in early 1988 Kathy and I went to Ann Arbor for franchisee training, and we also signed the franchise agreement (we were sooooo ignorant; the franchise agreement stated that the franchisor Little Professor would take 2.5 percent of the gross sales receipts, which, in the book business at the time, pretty much equated to all the net profits…).  We had financed the franchise by our own savings (about $40,000) and the rest (about $60,000) by a Small Business Administration (SPA) backed loan from Bank of La Costa in Carlsbad, which, unfortunately, was ultimately secured by the equity in our house in Anaheim (the SBA loan was eventually transferred to our house in Poway, then to our house in Aliso Viejo, before we were finally foreclosed on).  Anyway, we had high hopes, and I had my retail experience from working at Pressbyron back in Sweden, and also working for Little Professor in Anaheim Hills.  In my ignorance, I also thought that I could simply bypass all the hard work that was involved in getting a college degree, and just go straight to getting a viable business and make tons of money.  Boy, was I wrong! 

(Here is a little example in franchising; let' say that your gross sales equates to $1,000,000 per year, and that you are actually breaking even, so that you can keep the doors open.  Out of that million, you pay about 60% right back to the book wholesaler, which equates to $600,000.  Now you are left with a $400,000 gross profit which needs to cover the lease, the electric bill, wages for your employees, insurance, your advertising, your bookkeeper and whatever little measly salary you pay yourself for working 60 hours plus per week.  Let's say that after all that, you are left with a net profit of $35,000 (which equals 3.5% of total sales, which is about what you make in retail), and the franchisor has already taken 2.5% of your gross sales receipts (i.e. $25,000), you are left with a net profit of $10,000.  That measly $10,000 needs to cover any possible future expansion, maybe a little pension for yourself, and maybe a little tiny bonus for your employees.  Now you need to ask yourself if it all worth it, given that you have taken on all the risk in getting financing and signing the lease and whatever else contracts you have in place...  Just like the Las Vegas casinos, the franchisor never loses, but you may lose all your savings, your home, your dignity, and God forbid maybe even your family...) 

Undeterred, we rented a 2,000 square foot space (and signed a 5-year lease) in a new shopping center in Poway, which is located in north San Diego county.  The Twin Peaks shopping center was new, and we were the first tenants at 14751 Pomerado Road.  The shopping center was anchored by Target (and they are still there), and the food anchor was supposed to be a Lucky Stores.  We were pushing really hard to be opening by early June, 1988, in order to be opened by Father’s Day, June 19, 1988.  I think we were open by June 06, 1988, but that may be an approximation.                

Little Professor Book Center at the Twin Peaks shopping center, 14751 Pomerado Road, Poway.  Kathy, who was pregnant with our daughter Chelsea at the time, is showing off the "Coming Soon" sign.  

My vanity plates that I got in 1988.  Unfortunately, as can be seen from the top (front) plate, sometime in 1989, the Nissan truck I was driving at the time got totally crashed on the 60 freeway in Los Angeles, when a lady in the next lane over driving a Mercedes convertible fell asleep, lost control of her car and turned around 180 degrees, ending up in my lane.  I tried my best to stop, but it was too late, and I crashed right into her, head on.  The ensuing battle with her insurance company didn't help my state of mind, which was usually on the store and how to stay afloat.  Maybe it was an omen...  I've kept the plates ever since as a reminder...    

We tried our hand at various things to boost sales, such as having a book signing with a local author (see below), and great and friendly customer service (we could order books from just about any wholesaler). 

Having a book signing for a local author; Virgina Cowan-Smith, who wrote “Aloha Cowboy”, which was released in early 1988.  We put on a great show, even having a horse and rider trucked in.  I think we had ordered 50 copies of Virgina’s book; unfortunately, we probably only sold 5-6 copies…  Above the door, you can see the “Little Professor” sign.  This picture was taken in the summer of 1988.

 Regardless of our efforts at boosting sales, nothing seemed to help.  We had set aside $15,000 for working capital, but at a monthly loss of about $3,000, we burned through our working capital in 5 months!  Initially, I had quit my job at Executive Express in Newport Beach to run the store, but after three months (and facing up to the losses), I decided to go back to Executive Express, and I hired a day shift full-time manager and a part-time night-shift manager to run the store.  I would still come down on the weekends, to man the till.  Also, when we opened up in June of 1988, we were still living in Anaheim, and I would make the one-and-a-half hour, 100 mile trek down to the store, but in the summer of 1989, we sold our house in Anaheim and bought a house down in Poway, just a 10 minute walk from the store (I was still harboring my fantasy of having a successful business, and being able to walk to work). 

Christmas at the Little Professor Book Center, complete with Santa Claus.  This was our staff; unfortunately, with the passing of time I forgot all of their names, sorry!  I believe this was Christmas 1988, given that we are showcasing the book “Guts and Glory” by Ben Bradlee, Jr., which came out in early 1988.

 We continued to lose money; the $3,000 bleed every month never seemed to heal; instead the hemorrhaging seemed to get worse with time.  One of the contributing factors was the fact that the food anchor Lucky Stores was seven months late in opening, but, since the Lucky Stores was at the other end of the shopping center, I’m not sure that it would have increased foot traffic.  For any small retailer that’s in a shopping center in Southern California, you live and die by the food anchor, and foot traffic.  Without those two ingredients, you are dead…

But we hung on; we repeatedly reached out to the franchisor, Little Professor, but they had little in the way of good suggestions.  Sometime in early 1989, we essentially told Little Professor to take a long walk off a short pier, and, since we continued to lose money, they acquiesced.  We subsequently changed the name of the store to North County Book Center, to signify that we were located in North County San Diego, and we only had to pay for half of the signage to be replaced!  (That set us back some $3,500). 

North County Book Center.  We managed to hang on until April of 1990, when we closed the doors for the last time.

 I think we hung on through the Christmas season of 1989, and as usual hoping for the best.  Nevertheless, the signs of the end were all around us; we didn’t have the money to replenish the shelves, and just keeping the lights on were difficult.  We had had some discussions with a fellow that was thinking of opening a Christian bookstore in our location (and take over the lease), but he came to his senses and backed out.  In late 1989, with the signs of impending doom everywhere, we decided to sell our house in Poway, and we bought a house in Aliso Viejo, CA.  We closed the doors to the store for the last time sometime in April of 1990, financially ruined.  We sold the remaining book inventory (at a loss of course) to an independent bookstore in the Inland Empire, in order to pay our book wholesaler, Ingram.  Nevertheless, we still had the shelves and fixtures to get rid of, and I contacted a handful of liquidators in the area, but it seemed that nobody was interested.  Finally, I found a guy that was interested; he said “I won’t give you any money for the shelves and fixtures, but I’ll empty the store and take them off your hands”.  Great, that was better than having to pay the landlord a storage fee!  Two older guys showed up in an old Chevy El Camino, both of them dressed in jeans and flannel shirts.  They came in and did a quick survey the shelves and fixtures, and one of the guys spied my three phones and my two cash registers, which had set me back about $3,200 new.  He asked “are these for sale?” and of course I said yes!  He offered me $350 for the lot, and since I had 32 cents in my pocket, I said yes.  He proceeded to pull out a wad of dollar bills out of his pocket, $5,000 in total.  He said "this is my working capital; when I meet a down and out fella like yourself, I buy stuff for pennies on the dollar, and sell the stuff for a bit more, and make a bit of profit.”  The two guys had a dismantling business; when times were good they took down old high-rise buildings and sold the steel, and when times were lean, they recycled aluminum cans.  These guys were not proud, but they did know that dollars are green, no matter where they come from!  I was astonished, I realized there and then that I had been in the wrong business all along!

The aftermath was even uglier; a short while after we closed the store I got a call from a local tax collector, who was after $132 in back taxes for the inventory in the store (I had no idea that I had to pay taxes for the inventory that I had bought).  I told him that I had 32 cents in my pocket, and that I had just closed the store, and I asked him what he was going to do to me if I didn’t pay up.  He said (and I swear he was smiling) “I’ll chase you until your dying day”.  Somehow, I pulled $132 out of some orifice, and paid up…

Since we had signed up for a five-year lease on the store, we contacted a bankruptcy attorney and filed for bankruptcy in the spring-summer of 1990.  We also tried to work with the bank to reduce the principal and payments on our SBA loan, but, since they had our home equity as a security for the loan, they just told us to get a grip of the reality, and not long thereafter (probably early fall 1990), they foreclosed on our house in Aliso Viejo, which was probably one of the worst times in our married life.  (Nevertheless, all we lost was money; we still had our health, and we were young enough to start over, but at the time it seemed like the end).  Whenever somebody talks about the cost of business school, I always tell them that "my business school cost me $140,000 back in 1990!"  Unfortunately, that's not too far from the truth, when we calculate what we spent from our savings to open the store, and what we spent to keep the store doors open, and the equity we lost in the foreclosure of our house in Aliso Viejo.  But who's counting?  For a while, I was thinking of moving back to Sweden with Kathy and Chelsea, but in the end I didn't want to go back to Sweden like a loser with my tail between my hind legs; instead we soldiered on...     

So, why did it all go so wrong?  In my own opinion, we were both naïve and ignorant, and we were relying on the franchise to save us, which is something they just couldn’t do.  Also, retail is tough, the profit margins are slim, and if the franchisor is skimming off any profits, then you are pretty much doomed.  Furthermore, the Little Professor franchisor, which had traditionally opened stores in the Midwest where rents were much less than they are here in southern California, did not fully understand the financial impact that paying high rents would have on their southern California franchisees.  Ultimately, all five or so southern California  stores (with the exception of the Placentia Little Professor which had an established business with Cal State Fullerton students) that had opened about the same time that we opened our store, eventually failed and had to close.  Lastly, the business model itself (selling books through a franchise) wasn’t sustainable, which was evident from the eventual demise of the Little Professor franchisor, with only three remaining Little Professor locations in 2025.       

Going back to school, Irvine Valley College, summer 1990 through May 1993

In the spring of 1990, while we were still living in Aliso Viejo, something had compelled me to take a night class to learn how to type at the local high school, something that I have never regretted.  Hacking away at old IBM Selectric, I did learn how to type, which is something that has stayed with me ever since.  So, penniless and houseless, reality did finally hit me, and I ultimately realized that I needed to go back to school to earn a college degree, which is something that once earned cannot be taken away.  So, with Kathy’s help (Kathy had earned a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design from CSUF), I signed up for classes at Irvine Valley Community College, in the summer of 1990.       

Irvine Valley College, Irvine CA.

 That summer I took two classes 8-week classes; my fist class was English, and I did very well.  However, my second class was Algebra 101, and I was seriously challenged.  I remember the first weekend while being in the math class, studying on a Saturday, and not grasping any of the abstract concepts.  In a fit of frustration, I grabbed my math book and flung it across the room.  As it so happened, it landed pages open, in the corner, as if to mock me.  I had hit a fork in the road; I could either let the book sit in that corner and admit defeat, or eat the humble pie, crawl to the corner and start again.  After about a 20 minute introspection, I did the latter…  (In that class I learned how to study math my way, which essentially consists of learning all the examples in the book by heart).  I spent three years at Irvine Valley College, taking night classes while still working full time at Executive Express, finally earning an Associate’s Degree in Natural Science in May of 1993.

Going back to school, California State University, Long Beach, summer 1993 through December 1996 

California State University, Long Beach at 1250 Bellflower Blvd, Long Beach CA.

 While studying at Irvine Valley College, I had realized that I was actually pretty good at math, assuming I studied like crazy.  I knew I wanted to transfer to a four-year university, but what to study?  I landed on Chemical Engineering for two reasons:  One; at the time, chemical engineers had the highest starting salaries of any of the engineering disciplines.  Two; Cal State Long Beach had a chemical engineering program, and since CSULB was not too far from our rented house in Irvine, I applied for the program and was (miraculously) accepted.  I started in the summer of 1993, taking calculus III, and I did OK.  Long story short; I spend the next three and a half years at Cal State Long Beach, studying Chemical Engineering, and taking some really gnarly classes like “reactor kinetics”, a bunch of chemistry classes, calculus-based physics, and whatever else was needed to graduate.  I tried to get night classes whenever I could, but some of them I had to take during the day.  Fortunately, working as a messenger at Executive Express afforded me quite a bit of flexibility, so I could fit in a day class here and there.  While at CSULB, I also developed my habit of memorizing 3” x 5” cards; at one point I had 130 cards memorized, including a bunch of math formulas and even the complete periodic table!  I would study my cards while driving, sitting at a red light or while being on the freeway, and at least for me it really helped.  In addition to my memory cards, I started getting up at 4:00 AM, so that I could have an hour and a half for myself for studies, before I started my job at Executive Express.  This was also when I met CF; she was a very bright and dedicated student, and we took classes together, and, if my memory serves me, we worked on the capstone project together.  (Later, CF joined Micro Therapeutics as a quality engineer, but more on that story in Part Three).  CF and I have kept in contact over the years via LinkedIn, and we also had a chance meeting in July 2025, as I was getting an MRI for my prostate; small world!  Finally, in December of 1996, I graduated from California State University, Long Beach with a Batchelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering!  Redemption at last!  I had finally earned something that can’t be taken away, which is something that I was able to instill in all three of our kids, as they take on the world.

During this time I also applied for my United States citizenship, since the thinking was that if I ever got a job that would require a security clearance, it would probably be good to be a US citizen.  I went through the process, and I finally earned my citizenship in May of 1996.  Later, that has always helped me when looking for jobs, and I’m also extremely proud of being an American!  Whenever I go and visit my friends in Sweden they always say “don’t be soooooo loud!”, but I can’t help it, I’m an American now! 

Earning my US citizenship at the Los Angeles Convention Center in May of 1996.  Chelsea was cheering me on!

In retrospect, even though at the time it was devastating to lose the book store, our house and all our money, in the end it worked out OK, but it took until the year 2000 to finally get out of the bankruptcy.  Even if the book store would have been marginally successful, and earned us a meager living, I never would have had the impetus to go back to school and get a proper degree, which is something that has proven to be both personally satisfying and also quite lucrative.  So kids, stay in school!  Take it from me, I even turned to be a part-time college professor, but more on that in Part Three!