At the age of 18, Vernon entered Bowling Green Business College in Kentucky and took an accounting course that included the General Motors accounting system. Upon graduation in 1929, he was told of two bookkeeping jobs that were available.  One was at a coal mine.  The other was at the Shoemaker Garage, a Chevrolet dealership in the town of Falmouth about 200 miles to the northeast.  He opted for the latter, and eventually he became the garage manager. (TEXT CONTINUED BELOW) Here he stands behind a 1936 Chevrolet coupe, probably in the summer of that year or of 1937.  (In the background across the street is the competition:  the M.S. Myers Machine Shop & Garage, offering authorized Buick service.) As I reconstruct the scene from this photo and the following one, the Shoemaker Garage was located on one of the two main routes north from Lexington.  See the diagram at the right. In front of the showroom window, on the sidewalk, were a wooden bench and a couple of gasoline pumps.  Customers would often pull up to buy just a dollar's worth of gas, which should be enough to get them to Cincinnati, 37 miles away.  They'd stop their cars right on the street, along the curb where the pumps were located.  And my father is standing behind one such car, at the red X in this diagram.  The photographer is off to the left somewhere. In the next photo, we'll take a look at the guys on the bench.