< He ilay, no vvamiered past the

He ilay, no vvamiered past the wood shop ami ' spoilt the afternoon there." He was hooked.

“Being a farm boy, 1 wasn’t ignorant when it came to using my hands," he said. He was tutored, encouraged and put to work there and worked into the early evening hours completing jobs for the government, he says.

“We’d be there, sometimes, it’d be six, seven, eight o'clock before we'd get done,” he says.

His career plans changed again.

“1 said, 'Hell, I’m not going to Penn State,' that's ai! there was to it," he says.

He opene 1 a small repair shop with a $50 stake - “took me three years to pay it off." he.says — on Culpeper Street in VVarrenton. John is the grandson of Judge William H. Gaines and the -on John S. Gaines, who with his brother started the Gaines Brothers Bank in VVarrenton.

It was lit-iti - Gaines net yet 21 — and. his business began t > grow. He hired young men ami bo\ s from the Virginia School for the I leaf and Blind — “they're marvelous woodworkers,". he says —- and continued to expand, seeking out students from other, similar schools in the region and moving to a bigger shop across town.

“Vve ended up with a whole crowd of them," he says. "We made all kinds.of furniture then."

The future looked bright, but an X-ray of his left lung said otherwise. The three spots doctors found were probably the product of years of breathing mahogany dust He was forced out of his shops. While on.the mend, Gaines said, “I was trying to stay out of the Blue Ridge Sanitarium, is what I wa trying to do.”

"The doctor said to me, ‘Before you go to the sanitarium, why don’t we try this?' i quit -rooking, quit drinking - behaved :n; elf. lived a dull life. I've gone"'.5 .t ar.- without a beer, and I haven't livi d the dullest life in the world."

But finding .-puts u, the lung was not the worst news tn come his way. Hungs got worse. Hu next damned thing you know. i went proke,' he said.

Hi was off to 1 .eica.-t<;r. Pa., to make wooden propem-rs. That was