In 1982, our family moved to California because new construction was at a standstill.  My husband did finish carpentry at the time and he had just been paid for a large job.  But there were no new jobs to bid on and it wasn’t at all certain if the economy would change very soon.  One thing was for sure.  If there were no jobs now, we no longer had an income.  We had to decide if we could wait it out.  We didn’t have to think very hard about it.  We needed to move.

We had a friend who lived in Southern California who would let him sleep on her couch so he could look for a job.  Within less than a week, he had 3 job offers and started a new job 1 week after arriving.  It was not the same kind of job, but he had other talents and became an electrical estimator for a family-owned business.  Then, he found a place for us to live.  In the meantime I had to get everything ready to go, rent the house, pack all of our things, rent a moving van and fill it with all our belongings.

People came out of the woodwork to help me and we were able to leave in the van I had rented as soon as he arrived home.  It was the first day of an adventure, to say the least.  Our daughter Mary was almost 7 and our son Seth was 5.  All 4 of us were tightly packed into the front seat of a Ryder truck that was full of all our belongings.

And we took off, full of excitement and also some sadness because we were leaving our families behind.  But we had to be positive and look forward.  We were going to Southern California where our home would be for the next 7 years.