Making Do and Moving Up

For years our family car was a 1934 Studebaker. It had running boards, the shape of an earlier era, and eventually the wear of a machine asked to serve beyond anyone's expectations. We lived with a coal furnace and the routines that came with it. Comfort arrived gradually, one improvement at a time, and each improvement had a story behind it.^[1]

The most unusual story began when my father learned there was demand for rabbit brains used in producing thromboplastin. He developed a side business collecting and preparing them. The work was messy and exacting, and the whole idea sounded unlikely, but it nearly doubled his government salary. Opportunity did not always arrive in respectable packaging.^[2]

That additional income helped move us into a larger house and gave the family possibilities that salary alone would not have provided. I remember the house as a mansion because of what it represented. My father had combined expertise, alertness, and willingness to do extra work. Long afterward, he believed the opening had come as a blessing connected to his faith and payment of tithing.^[3]