Here are the relevant paragraphs that justify what I suggested about Sheridan above
The change was quite sudden. It occurred when the newspaper he had been working for went bankrupt. He suddenly found himself without a job in Eastern Washington's bleak desolate Columbia Basin during the coldest part of winter. Within less than a month, he hadn't a penny. His wife spent his salary as quickly as he earned it, so nothing was ever saved. But she couldn't be blamed. A small town newspaper reporter didn't make much. Ninety buck a week was all.
...
It had been humiliating. The Social Welfare Caseworker was suspicious. She scrutinized the stack of forms he'd filled out. "You're no kid. You're thirty-seven years old. Why haven't you saved for a rainy day? You owe it to your wife and kids," she said.
The caseworker had small mean dark eyes set close together. Her lips were tightly pursed forming a circle of dry-prune wrinkles about the mouth. She looked as though she'd been sucking on a lime. It would take at least a month to process his claim, she said. In the meantime she'd give him a voucher for the rent, and he could pick up some food at the agency's warehouse. Thanking her, Grecco explained that he would need some money for gas. His home was at a nearby town some twenty-five miles away. The social worker agreed to advance him the bare minimum; however it would be deducted from his first month's allotment. "You been over to the employment office?" she asked. "I understand they're running a gas line to Soap Lake. They need men to dig the ditch. You aint afraid to get your hands dirty, are you?" Vince tried to explain what had happened, but she only scoffed. "I've been working here for thirty years, and I thought I'd heard them all, but yours takes the cake."
...
Grecco's wife was outraged. The humiliation was unbearable. Maud would not speak to Vince. She left terse brief notes on the kitchen table. Do this. Don't do that. They had violent fights. Once when he tried to take the car keys from Maud, she struck him across the brow with a butcher knife. On another occasion, a neighbor called the cops. Grecco had pushed Maud up against the bathtub. As she fell backwards into the tub her foot lodged against the toilet twisting her knee out of joint. The police gave Vince one last warning. Next time and it was a month in jail. No excuses.
It was 1962. Times were tough...
...
There was no work in the Columbia Basin for a journalist. Grecco must go to Seattle. However, he had only a few dollars in his pocket, not enough for gas a bus ticket. He tried thumbing a ride, but was picked up by the highway patrol at Ellensburg.
Hitchhiking on interstate highways was forbidden. They threatened him with either a fine or jail. Grecco had no alternative. He could not walk some two hundred miles over the Cascade Mountains in subzero weather. He went some distance from town and flagged a ride. The driver was nervous. He was not in the habit of picking up hitchhikers. One was always reading about how someone was either robbed or murdered. Then why had he stopped? Well, he wanted someone to help with the gas. When Vince told him that he was nearly broke, the driver dropped him off in the dark. He was angry. Grecco was an imposition.
The snow was six foot deep at the side of the highway. Grecco waited until sunrise dancing up and down to keep from freezing. He got a ride in the back of a truck to Seattle. The flatbed was covered with grease. All he had to sit on was a section of sewer pipe that slid about on the oily floorboards.
Grecco got a job at the Seattle World's Fair as a "Bubbalator" operator....
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