For me, one of the benefits of working at Desert Crucible was interaction with the ethnically varied artisans that constituted our work force. I was amazed at the unending stream of lessons learned just from observing and participating in daily routine activities. Kindness, sharing, and frugality were constants.
Bronze casting was not a high-paying occupation. We started new employees at just over minimum wage, and the top wage was not particularly attractive. No one got rich.
Two of our employees were a young couple from Laos, who had two young daughters. Theora worked with them to help them establish a budget.
They had worked for us for about a year when the father approached me and asked if I would give him a letter of recommendation so he could buy a house. I was incredulous. I knew what their wages were, and I could conceive of no way they could afford to buy a house.
I had a lot to learn.
In addition to their wages, they religiously worked the swap meets, buying and reselling goods on evenings and weekends. They had worked their way into a “rent with option to buy” agreement with their landlord. They had saved enough money for the down payment, and had planned a budget that would allow them to proceed.
He showed me the carefully crafted budget, and I realized it could work if they were able to stick to it. I exclaimed “I don’t know how you have been able to do this, and how you have saved this much money! How do you do it?”
He smiled and explained. “It’s easy. My wife and I each make a weekly list of things we need to buy. Then we exchange our lists and study them and discuss them. We take turns. ‘Oh, we don’t need that, and we don’t need that, and … ‘ You get the idea.
They ended up buying the house, later selling it at a nice profit, moving to Rosemead, California, both getting scholarships to study bookkeeping and accounting, and securing good-paying accounting jobs.
Years later they visited us when their daughters were playing in a tennis tournament in Tucson.
You can’t make this stuff up!
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