Ch. 6
The Veterans Administration had provided lots of good & plenty.
It had provided grants to those who provided me cheap, sometimes free, housing for several years in Albuquerque. Granted, seldom was there privacy, which makes a big difference, because along with the room there was always also provided ~ a roommate.
The VA provided free medical care, even slit my throat once & stitched it up for free. T'was an operation they performed in order to cure my whithering bones ~ that is, a blonde home-girl intern plucked out a disfunctional pyrothyroid gland, which left me blathering with a father/daughter affection for her ~ and quite possibly cured.
The VA constructed a cast on an arm that I broke, or that was broken for me, while fighting for a young Hispanic darlin' in an Albuquerque alley, at which was the door to the hole-in-the-wall in which I lived for a spell.
And the VA provided part-time minimum-wage employment in which I had worked the grounds as a groundsman & the wards as a house-keeper when I couldn't easily find employment else-where.
And they finally bestowed upon me a permanent part-time government job in the Nutrition & Food Services Department down in the basement.
But in order to get this part-time government job, there was a little box on the application form inside of which I had to put a check ~ which disignated that I agreed to work extra hours whenever they wished. And this is where the trouble began.
photo:
Iraq
(I've never been there)