Humans of Downey - Brian and Mary

"Probably the biggest quirk our family has is that we are dysfunctional.

"One thing I do too much of is work. I'm a small business owner in construction and I spend somewhere between 70 and 75 hours on the job every week. I have certain goals to meet my payroll and my own bills and I find I must work that much to earn enough money. Now, I would like to retire in the next 5 years or so. To do that, my thinking is that within that 5 years I'll slow down each year until I hand it off to one of my employees. No one in my family does what I do so, I'm not building a family business.

"When I was growing up, our family would vacation in Crestline. It would be my family and grandma and Joan coming up to visit. Grandma had a red 1962 Chevy Corvair and there is a very steep hill on the way up to Crestline. This hill was so steep that Grandma's Corvair couldn't make it up the hill unless she put the car in reverse and backed up that part of the road. So, every year my grandma would get to a point, turn the car around, and put it in reverse to make it up to where we were staying. Sometimes I got to go with her. It was cool. That's a picture I'll remember all my life."
~ Brian