A、He is a harsh person. B、He is mean to others. C、He is very demanding in his work. D、He usually works very late. C

When I turned 12, I worked summers at my father’s small brick cleaning business. I remember the harsh acid smell of the cleaning solution and the scraping sound of stiff iron brushes against rough brick. It was tempting to hurry a job just finish. But anybody who worked for Thomas Kahoon had to meet his standards, and that included me. If I messed up, he made me stay late until I got it right. My father wasn’t being mean. He demanded the same of himself. Every brick he cleaned on a house stood out like a red jewel in a white setting. It was his signature. In 1970, when I was 20, I got married and moved out of my parents’ modest place into a housing project. Drugs and gang violence were just beginning to plague the projects. Some of my friends went to jail. Some were killed. My wife Verllen was 18 and nobody gave our marriage a chance. But we believed in each other and our faith made us strong. When we married, I worked as a stock clerk at Southwest Super Foods. It was hard, tedious work. Each Friday night a truck came, with cases of food that had to be unloaded, priced, and placed on shelves. Most of stock clerks tried to get Friday night off. But I was always ready to work. By Saturday morning, all the cans and jars in my aisle were replaced with the labels facing smartly out, like a line of soldiers on review. That was my signature. I took pride in the job nobody wanted.
19. What do we learn about the speaker’s father?
20. What does the speaker say about the housing project?
21. What do we learn about the speaker as a stock clerk?