Army Entrepreneur

Tom: I was down there in Pensacola. I’d always made it a point to save the first dollar I made. If I didn’t make but five dollars I saved part of it. So when I got to the service, I had a pretty good savings account from the real estate and such.

And so I got down there, and soldiers always broke. And I had this loan business, that they’d come to me and said “You let me have five dollars today, I’ll pay you seven-fifty next week when payday comes.” I said “that sounds like a pretty good deal.” So I started loaning money.

When you lined up to get your money…

I was standing there waiting on them. [laughter] But I had a lot outstanding when I got transferred, and I never got the first dime. There was a few hundred dollars involved, which was a loooot of money.

Well, I was making a lot of money. I had one fellow who — I didn’t say a lot, I mean I was making two or three times what I was getting paid. And there was one fellow that wanted to set up an ironing service, and I said “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ll set you up on this thing, and you do the ironing, and we’ll split 50/50.” He said “that’s a deal, I’ll do that.”