My first job was delivering caskets to mortuaries. My dad was a casket-maker.1 It was a family business, and when I turned 16 and was licensed to drive, I could free up one of my uncles to do more productive work.

The shop was in Lynwood, a Los Angeles County suburb. My favorite delivery was Brown’s Colonial Mortuary in Santa Ana because the round trip took up most of a morning or an afternoon. When you’re 16, getting paid even a pittance for driving all day is a pretty good deal. The truck was a ¾ ton flatbed Ford. It was plenty big enough for three or four caskets, which was often the load because we’d try to route me to two or three destinations at a time whenever possible. Gas was like a quarter a gallon, but the profit margin for the fledgling Enterprise Casket Company was anorexically thin.