I'm thinking I should spend some time and look up some of my friends that moved to Texas...
Back when I finished school in the early 80's was also the time of the nations highest unemployment since the Great Depression.
I was not having any luck finding a job so I bought an old shack on a postage size lot in East Oakland with my savings and began rehabbing it... looking back, it was a great learning experience is so many ways one could never learn in school.
This was also when I built a trailer hitch for my 72 Plymouth Valiant so I could tow 1 yard cement trailers for my concrete projects... back then, no one cared I was using a car... now, even a 1/2 ton pickup is too small... 3/4 ton or better.
So my first tow vehicle was a Plymouth Valiant with a slant 6 and I added a roof rack and removed the back seat and built shelves for my supplies and locked the tools in the large trunk...
I really never flipped houses, my plan was to buy one every 12 to 18 months, repair, get a loan, rent it out and repeat...
It was 1990 before I bought my first truck... a 85 Van... which was great with one problem... A lot of the neighborhoods I worked in were not the best... no one ever bothered my old 72 Valiant... my Van, on the other hand was a target for thieves... broken into many times... even while I was just a few steps away inside the house or in the parking lot at the Home Depot... alarm would sound and the thief would run off and the damage was done.
Still have the old Plymouth out back... that car has paid for itself time and again towing yard after yard of concrete... stacking 50' of fence boards, posts on the roof and bringing water heaters strapped to the trunk...
