The program stipulated that I would work for Westinghouse in Kansas City, Missouri for one year.  After one year of work I would go back to engineering school for one year.  I was to go back and forth until graduation.  Missouri was having a severe heat wave and drought when I arrived in the summer of 1954.  The daytime temperature would usually reach 108 degrees or higher during the day.  It did not cool down much at night.  For entertainment we would grasp a thermometer to watch the temperature drop rather than rise. 

There was no air conditioning in those days.  I became miserable and left for California.  I moved in with my brother Aldo for a while.  I slept on the floor of his small rental in Pasadena, California.  I found a job with the Pasadena Packard agency.  I would deliver and pick up cars.  We used a three wheeled motorcycle that would attach to the rear bumper of an automobile.  I attached the motorcycle to the car to be delivered, delivered the car and then drove the motorcycle home.  I was new to the area and frequently became lost.  The smog was terrible.

The draft was beginning to breathe down my neck so I joined the Navy. I left for boot camp on 27 October 1954.  It was Navy Day.  The Navy has since changed the date it recognizes as its birth date.  Like a lot of other Politically Correct decisions, the decision to change the birth date of the Navy after all of these years was imprudent.