When I tumed 12, I worked summers at my father's small brick cleaning businss. I remember the harsh acid smell of the cleaning solution and the scraping sound of stiff iron brushes against rough brick. It was tempting to hurry a job-just fnish. (19) But anybody who worked for Thomas Kahoon had to meet his standards, and that included me. If I messed up, he made me stay late until I got it right. My father wasn't being mean. He demanded the same of himself. Every brick he cleaned on a house stood out like a red jewel in a white setting. It was his signature. (20) In 1970, when I was 20, I got married and moved out of my parents' modest place into a housing project. Drugs and gang violence were just beginning to plague the project. Some of my friends went to jail. Some were killed. My wife Verllen was 18 and nobody gave our marriage a chance. But we believed in each other and our faith made us strong. (21)When we married, I worked as a stock clerk at Southwest Super Foods. It was hard, tedious work. Each Friday night a truck came, with cases of food that had to be unloaded, priced, and placed on shelves. Most of stock clerks tried to get Friday night off. ButI was always ready to work. By Saturday moming, all the cans and jars in my aisle were replaced with the labels facing smartly out, like a line of soldiers on review. That was my signature. I took pride in the job nobody wanted.