Free Empty Pockets by Dale Herd

out for the next Saturday. She said she couldn’t. Later that week he asked her out again and she said to please not ask her.
    Two years later, while a sophomore in high school, John began dating a girl named Karen, even though she wasn’t one of the popular girls.
    Five years later, one sunny spring day, John read African Genesis. He was now a sophomore in college and beginning to read on his own.
    â€œThe social order of the jackdaw,” he read, “an extremely intelligent bird, indicates that a social animal does not only seek to dominate his fellows but the degree to which he succeeds obtains for him in the eyes of others his social ranking.
    â€œFurther,” he read, “once established this ranking remains permanent throughout one’s lifetime regardless of how early it was established in one’s lifetime.”
    John couldn’t believe what he had read. For three days, refusing all talk to leave his room, he lay in bed listening to rock ’n’ roll on his radio.

The Pursuit of Happiness
    T he first thing to do, he said, was never to get down on yourself, to always make things easy on yourself. If he became unhappy, he said, he always told himself to find out the cause, and then he changed it, no matter what the circumstances, it was always wrong to worry about the consequences.
    Working at IBM taught him this. Right after Korea he had gone to work for IBM as a management trainee. His wife said if you hate it so much why don’t you quit? He had been afraid to quit, but finally did, even though there wasn’t another job to go to. To make ends meet he took work as a laborer hanging drywall. It turned out he liked this better, and it even paid more money. That was the first step, he said, but he still wasn’t happy. Then he decided it wasn’t what kind of job, it was having a boss. He decided to work for himself. He kept on drywalling but banked half of each paycheck. When the money was there he bought a new pickup and the tools and bid his first job, a subcontract to drywall six tract houses in West Covina. He won the bid, quit his job, and started his own business.
    That was ten years ago.
    It had been a tremendous step.
    Right now his business was so good he was going into another business. The new business was so obvious a step it was hard to believe it hadn’t been done, but it hadn’t.
    Metal-studding, he said, mass-produced wall-studding made of metal compounds. No more hammer and nails, no more wooden two-by-fours, no more slivers and splinters and mashed thumbs. All that would be needed would be an electric stapling gun and the studs. Houses would spring up in two days’ time. First day, pour the foundation, slap in the studs. Second day, staple up the drywall and presto, instant house. Well, let the foundation cure first, so by second week, instant house. Two weeks tops.
    As far as he knew, he said, he and his partner, a Malibu Colony psychiatrist, were the only men in the country working on it. They already had the patents secured, were building the first production machine. They had a building in La Puente where they would begin manufacturing, production to commence in the fall.
    Right now they were testing different metals.
    The studs would be made in various sizes from an amazing number of different compounds.
    Their overall plan was franchise packaging.
    By 1977 there would be metal-stud plants everywhere across the nation.
    He wasn’t rich now but by ’77 he would be. By ’77 metal studs would revolutionize the entire building industry, all benefits accruing back to him, and to his partner, of course.
    And then it was on to Oregon.
    By ’77 he would be able to live anyplace he wanted and Oregon was the place. A man could live anywhere there and still go hunting and fishing. Or over in Idaho, the Snake River country, that was good country, live in a small town where everyone knew everybody.
    Because that’s what he wanted