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CHAPTER 8. Settling In
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Settling In CHAPTER 8 { 100 } SETTLING IN We lived close enough to Lowry Field that not having a car didn’t present a significant problem. Hedy and Leo could walk to work if they had to, or take a bus; usually one of their many friends stopped by to give them a lift. Grocery shopping was another matter. We three went together to the Safeway supermarket, the closest store to our house, carrying our heavy bags of groceries from the store onto the bus, then trudging the rest of the way home, our arms threatening to fall off by the time we reached our doorstep. I continued to attend Opportunity School, only now I had a much longer bus ride down East Colfax Avenue to Broadway, where I changed to another bus which took me the rest of the way to the school on Welton Street. As my English improved, Hedy suggested I find a job after school. “I am so sorry, Wolfgang,” she said to me one evening, “but Leo and I have to watch every penny. I can’t afford to give you bus fare anymore to go to school. I don’t mind you going to school, but you have to carry your load. You understand, don’t you?” I understood. I looked through the want ads in the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, but jobs for young people were difficult to find in 1951. As a teenager, Leo briefly worked as a delivery truck driver for Gus’s Bakery on Huron Street in south Denver. Leo checked the telephone book and found that the bakery was still in existence. He and I went to Gus’s Bakery and spoke to Gus Jr., the current owner and operator , telling him about my experience as a baker’s apprentice in Germany. Gus introduced me to his night foreman, Henry Sonnleitner. “Can you use him, Hank?” Gus asked. Hank was in his thirties, I figured when I looked at him closely, over six feet, slender, with an open, honest smile. I liked Hank immediately. Hank looked at me. His eyes sparkled, a smile played around his lips, and brushing back his thinning blond hair with his right hand, he said, “Yes, I can. I need someone to fold boxes for the evening cake run.” I started work the next afternoon. The job involved folding jelly roll boxes and putting them on baking sheets. The tin sheets fit into roll-around racks holding forty sheets. Later at night a crew of women would fill the boxes with jelly rolls, wrap the boxed jelly rolls in cellophane, and by five o’clock in the morning the jelly rolls, along [54.165.248.212] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:32 GMT) { 101 } SETTLING IN with various other cakes and breads, were delivered to city stores and supermarkets. My job paid seventy-five cents an hour. I left home at six thirty in the morning to catch the seven o’clock bus into town. My first class was at eight. By four in the afternoon I caught a bus on South Broadway as far as Huron Street, then walked the remaining mile to the bakery. In the evenings I worked as long as possible, leaving just in time to catch the last bus, at ten o’clock, heading into town. I had to change buses at East Colfax Avenue and Broadway adjacent to the state capitol, then rode for another forty minutes to the end of the line. I usually got home around eleven thirty. A grueling routine evolved for me: ride the bus, go to school, ride the bus, go to work, ride the bus, go to bed, sleep five to six hours, get up and do the same all over again. Except for Saturdays and Sundays, every hour of my day was consumed by school, work, riding the bus, and sleeping. I woke up tired and went to bed tired. Nothing much had changed for me from the way things were back in Hannover at the Rheinische Bäckerei. In the beginning Hedy made me hand over my meager earnings just as she had done with her parents when she was a child. Leo didn’t like it. Hedy and Leo talked it over, and Leo reluctantly agreed that instead of Hedy just taking my money, I would pay for my necessities, from the toothpaste I used in the morning to the clothing I needed...