Peter & Aaron's All-Night Hustle

By the summer of 1989, the older boys were taking on heavy labor to earn spending money. Dad had even drawn up a formal chore list with specific fees: $25 to thoroughly clean the garage so two cars could park in it, $15 to clean the pad outside, $26 to mow and edge both yards, and so on.

The work ethic of Peter and his best friend Aaron Horne was something Dad wrote about with evident pride. On a Saturday in early July, while the rest of the family went to the circus, "Peter slept most of the day, having been up all night helping his buddy Aaron Horne clean up the Horne's vacant lot in the Homestead". Dad recorded their explanation of the all-nighter: "They said that they were ready to call it a day at 0430, when they noticed that it was starting to get light again and they decided to go ahead and finish the job".

A couple of weeks later, Peter and Aaron tackled the heavy lifting at the Goodman house. The task was hauling boxes into the two attics to clear the garage. "They had put all of the little boxes into the garage attic Saturday (the access is very small, so bigger boxes would not fit)," Dad wrote, "but waited until this evening to lug the larger ones up to our room. The opening to that attic (through our closet) is much larger". Dad was thinking ahead: "I hope to put a pull-down stair in there someday, and possible rough in a more usable storage loft".

What really impressed Dad was the finishing touches. "I was quite pleasantly surprised when they finished and actually vacuumed the closet and put away most of the things that they had moved".

To reward the boys, Dad took Peter, Aaron, Nicky, and Nicky's friend Johnny Sisk to the Wendy's dinner bar. It turned into a surprisingly pleasant evening: "We had a pleasant talk, and they took obvious pains to humor the old man by acting like civilized human beings".

While they were eating, Binki called from Disneyland. Dad had forwarded the house phone to his portable phone, and Binki reported he'd been "off on his own in the park most of the day, tie shopping, he said" and that the group planned to drive through the night. Dad worried but reasoned, "I guess that I can reassure myself with the three driver thing".

He was still worried at 2:30 AM. "I tossed and turned most of the night, uneasy about Dina and the group driving across that desert during the night". At 4:30 AM, the phone rang and a voice asked: "Do you know where your wife is?" Dad was bewildered until Mom laughed and said they were 75 miles west of Phoenix, having just come into car phone range. "Naturally, I also got a hard time for not recognizing my wife's voice".