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Doctors' bills and hospital expenses were two-thirds of George's salary that first year after the accident. The nerves of Paul's mother, Pauline Carey, were frayed to the breaking point from worry over her infant son. "It was like a nightmare," Pauline says, "and I kept reliving the accident over and over again."

Pauline Carey was always known to her friends as an excellent cook. To her, cooking was more than just part of the job of being a housekeeper and mother. Cooking to Mrs. Carey is a hobby as well as an essential household task. "I especially like to bake cakes," Mrs. Carey says, "but I like to cook, period." She is always trying a new dish on her family . . . or a different twist to an old dish.

One of her special dishes is spaghetti sauce made from a recipe given to her by Captain Harry Chambers of Lewes, Delaware, who is a well-known boat pilot of that town. Captain Chambers received the recipe from the master of an Italian ship he piloted safely up the Delaware River from Lewes to Philadelphia.

This original recipe contained tomatoes, onions, tomato puree, tomato paste, garlic, salt, sugar, peanut oil, black pepper, red pepper and flour. By following her cooking hobby and experimenting, Mrs. Carey, by devising a different method of cooking the sauce, was able to eliminate the flour, which had been added for thickening.

After Captain Chambers' present was put to work in Mrs. Carey's kitchen it didn't take long for many of her friends to exclaim over the delicious sauce, and she would always give them a jar of it to take home.

SOME MONTHS after the accident had occurred, one of Mrs. Carey's friends suggested that she put her hobby to use and make the sauce for sale to help meet the huge medical expenses that faced the Careys. Also, selling the sauce to her friends, instead of giving it to them, would keep her so busy that she would not have as much time for worry over little Paul.

That suggestion was the start of a most interesting success story of a small business started from a hobby. The production for that first month was a few quarts of sauce made in a small pan on the kitchen stove of the Carey home. Most sales were made to friends who would drop in to buy a jar from the Careys' refrigerator. Today, production has increased to well over seventy-five cases a week, with a good prospect of doubling that quantity in the very near future.

From the first, Mrs. Carey's sauce met with public approval and sales have increased by leaps and bounds. Three weeks after starting her venture she had doubled production and was using two pans on the kitchen stove, with a total production of twenty-four quarts a day.

This gave Pauline confidence and she and George decided to put the venture on a real commercial basis, if it could be done.

Mrs. Carey got busy on the telephone calling every name in the phone book, whether the name was known to her or not. Mr. Carey took pen in hand and began to write to different firms and the government for ideas on how to cut costs and about the legal involvements in selling a food product to the public.

The Federal Security Agency's Food and Drug Administration in Washington gave Mr. Carey all the necessary information on what should appear on the label relative to the contents of the sauce.

A local newspaper editor gave them the name of a label company that could print their label just as they might want it.

Both Pauline and George realized that their sauce would have to bear an attractive label for people to remember it when they were ready to buy again. They also knew that if they ever hoped to place their product into stores, they would have to have an attractive label that would stimulate impulse sales of the sauce. A label was sketched out and was printed on a yellow paper with blue lettering.

MRS. CAREY tried to place her sauce in the local A & P Store. The local manager wanted to buy it but said he would have to go through the district manager in Baltimore. The district manager was contacted in person and he consented to give the sauce a try in a few stores in Delaware. It is now carried by all the stores of the chain in the Baltimore district.

By now production had grown to a point where five cases a day were being made in the kitchen and the Carey family put its collective foot down and demanded that Mrs. Carey find other quarters. There was so much spaghetti sauce brewing that there was no room to cook the family meals.

The basement was then taken over, lock, stock and barrel and a woman was hired to help Mrs. Carey on a full-time basis. George became a bookkeeper and continued as salesman for his wife's business during odd hours when he wasn't working. Their son, Rowland, now 10, was able to do his part by helping his mother fasten labels to the jars. Paul wasn't old enough to help at that time.

Time became a problem. Mr. and Mrs. Carey arose at 5 o'clock each morning to start the day's work. Pounds and pounds of onions had to be cut up and fried with Mrs. Carey standing for several hours stirring the big pots of sauce while they slowly simmered on the stove.

To speed production, Mr. Carey built a multi-burner electric stove with the burners properly spaced to handle the large pots used. He also converted a vegetable slicer to his wife's needs for cutting the onions. To save her the necessity of stirring by hand, Mr. Carey rigged a motor with a shaft and paddles attached for stirring the sauce automatically while it cooked. Now he is working on a gadget to put labels on the jars in a jiffy without having to use a slow hand sponge.

AFTER THE onions are cut and fried they are put into a sauce of tomatoes and tomato puree and tomato paste in either the fifteen-gallon or the twenty-gallon army surplus pots used on the stove. The electric stirrer keeps this moving slowly for eight hours over a medium fire, after it has begun to boil. The juice is then cooked out of the tomatoes to the desired thickness. Just before it is poured into jars, Mrs. Carey turns the fire up to bring the sauce back to a boil.

Twelve sterilized jars make a case that goes to a store. The patronage of a hospital and an industrial plant were solicited and they buy cases containing four, one-gallon jars each. To pour the sauce into the jars is an art in itself. The jars seal while cooling as the sauce contracts and pulls the lids tight. If too much sauce has been poured the lids will not seal. If too little is poured, then the customer has less sauce than appeared to be in the jar at the time it was filled.

With production expanded to this point, the Careys began to look for ways and means of cutting costs to the bone. Visits to local canners got wholesale prices for much of the tomato products that went into production. The yellow classified section of the Philadelphia telephone book gave them addresses needed to obtain jars, lids and cases at wholesale prices.

It was also at this point in the business that sales and production took their biggest jump. Mrs. Carey sent a jar of her sauce to a local food distributor for him to try at home. He liked it so well that he told her he would attempt to place it in the independent stores he serviced.

Because of this, distribution of Mrs. Carey's sauce is wide. W. O. Covey & Son, the distributor, report that the sauce is one of the fastest moving items they handle. They have placed it on independent grocers' shelves over the entire Eastern Shore of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia—900 altogether. In addition to that, the Careys hope to complete a contract within a few weeks with another large chain that will give them distribution throughout Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Although the Careys have never done any printed advertising, mail orders have come to them from ten states and from as far away as California. The first year they grossed $2,100 and today that figure has more than doubled.

SINCE THE accident occurred, Paul has undergone four major operations and still has another one facing him. Although the Careys are not free from debt, the income from the spaghetti sauce has cut the thousands of dollars of bills down to a point where the Careys aren't worried about paying for them.

The family has become more closely knit since the accident. During the summer they all head for the beach on picnics or go fishing. Or maybe they go crabbing or clam hunting. Anything to do as a family group is enjoyed by the Careys.

Mrs. Carey sums up her family pretty well: "Although the accident was a terrible thing for all of us, we have been blessed in other ways which many families have not. Paul is now six and I used to worry about him starting school or what his playmates would say about the fact that he has only one eye. He has come through with flying colors and he is not at all self-conscious. His glass eye is mainly the reason for this. But at the same time he is a wonderful boy. As for the rest of us, little Paul has shown us the way to living our lives to the fullest and to enjoy the love and companionship that only a well-knit family can bring."