
It’s why I came home now, I guess, because I realized it. In Nebraska when I herded cattle, and the Dakotas, and Arizona, and now in Texas. Hap, I’ve had twenty or thirty different kinds of jobs since I left home before the war, and it always turns out the same. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying.

To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. Shipping clerk, salesman, business of one kind or another. BIFF: Well, I spent six or seven years after high school trying to work myself up.
