Summary

At the end of the school year, Joe said goodbye to Joyce, packed up his Franklin, and drove out to the Washington scablands where he hoped to find work building the new dam with the Grand Coulee excavation team. Most of the men working on the project had secured a wage of $0.50 per hour, but Joe, determined to make enough money for his next school year, had signed up to work the dangerous job of dangling off the cliff face in a harness, jack-hammering the reluctant rock. This job paid $0.75 per hour. When the job assessment doctor took a look at Joe’s body and heard that he rowed for college crew, he gave him the job immediately. Joe, like most of the other dam workers, rented a tiny room in Shack Town, the shantytown for workers that...