eviction-lost years

When he was 12 years old he was put to work.  He was still small and scrawny, but he had developed a love of taking things apart and had a willingness to work with his hands although he remained insecure.
Very rarely he would go to the dark and poor neighborhoods in his father's grand car and sit while his father went to the door to collect the rent.  He felt exposed and out of place and scared for his father. It would always be later, when the worker had time to return from work and when he might have beeen paid for the week and have the money to pay the rent which otherwise might go to food, perhaps some entertainment , or maybe for alcohol or medicine for a child.
He was sent out with rough but friendly men who would do most of the work while asking for a tool or that he hold some piece in place.  An extra pair of hands that could have been replaced with a set of vice grips had they been invented yet.
Steadily, however, he was given more to do.  He would put up screens while the plumbing was fixed, then he would fix the plumbing.  He would climb up and saw where the support was too weak to hold the heaviers, more expeienced man.  He would see the thankfulness in the people's eyes when he repaired something particularly important or when he would take a house and spend more time than was necessary to make sure extra screens were in place so more windows could be opened without letting mosquitos in.
Occassionally he would be given harder work, scraping off a hundred years of layered wall paper and then carrying the debris out, Then he would take the heavy cans of paint and the bulking rollers with their extensions and slap paint unprofessionally on a home where a good painter was too expenesive to hire alone.  The experienced painters he worked with always drank beer too early and too long, their alcoholic natures trapping them in work which their skill would otherwise have carried them past.
 When he was stronger he would be given the job of helping to carry people's possessions to the street.  Them standing uncertainly around watching, the children watching.  Him carrying on his strong back the furniture and other possessions while the other children watched sometimes crying, sometimes blank eyed.  The parents milling around.
After one or two evictions, however, he had to leave and he would never work for his fahter again.
An old man would know that poor people were necessary, at least for now, in this world.  That there must be unintelligent as well as intelligent poor people, for who else would invent the new industries and carry them forward.  The old man would realize that the only fair way to do things would be to take all of the children born around the world on a given day, mix them up and hand one back randomly to each parent; but this would never be done.  Even were it practical, too many hearts would be broken.  But only in this way would the rich fully understand the poor and only in this way would the right person be likely to be in the right place when called upon.
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