November 19, 2019:
He tried manufacturing. A garage business: Vietnamese ladies around a table stuffing printed circuit boards. He did not treat the ladies with respect, and he blamed his lazy partner for their failure.
He tried panning for gold. It was the annual family vacation trip, for years. Sutter's Mill or thereabouts, "just playing," he said, "because it's fun." But it was serious and, like the printed circuit boards, cost him more than it made.
He tried selling machine parts. He tried I don't know what all else. "All I want is to make eighty thousand dollars a year," he said, bitterly, as though describing a Sisyphean labor where success was always just arm's length from reach.
He tried everything he could think of, except paying his $60 monthly child support. Not even Sisyphus would be that ambitious.