I had wanted to be a carpenter, but, as I stood there with my mother, at the labour exchange counter, the man was shaking his head slowly, he said that there were no vacancies for carpenters. He had, he said, got a vacancy for a Pawnbrokers assistant which might do me until a vacancy in carpentry came along.
The year was 1935 and it was a cold, wet day, as we trudged along to the bus stop: the small green card being safely tucked away in my mothers purse. We boarded a bus to Higher Broughton and sat on the front seat downstairs behind the driver. As I sat there, silent and anxious about my interview with this unknown employer, I watched the windscreen wipers as they swung to and fro, in a small arc sending the rain down in small streams at either side of the pane.
We got off the bus at the junction of two main roads, and, as I looked across, my heart sank as I saw right on the corner, the pawnshop. As we walked across the road, hand in hand, I noticed that the three balls were pointing skywards, instead of groundwards in the usual way. This small detail lifted my heart a little and I didn't feel quity so nervous.
My mother opened the shop door and we stepped inside, my heart, all of a sudden, pounding. After a few terrifying moments of silence, just as I felt that I was going to faint, I heard footsteps approaching along the bare wooden floor. A tall, smart, schoolmasterly type of man appeared from around the corner by a huge brass polished safe.
"Good Morning Madam" the man said, as my mother fumbled in her purse for the small green card. After being told our business the man disappeared behind the safe and returned a few moments later with a pen and asheet of notepaper, which he put on the counter. "Now Son," said he "Will you just write your namr and address, and the name of your school, on this paper." As I nervoursly wrote down the required information; feeling sure that I had never written so badly, the man said "That's fine - can he start on Monday morning at 7.30am?" My mother said that I could and off we went, almost joyausly, out into the street and the rain, and the freedom of a whole week-end ahead.
My father had died two years before, . END OF 488 WORD SAMPLE OF 779 WORD.
