From Puerto Rico, now welded to Camden

Ramon Gonzalez's first customer asked him to build a wrought-iron facade enclosure - folks in Camden call them "belly porches" - at her house on 20th Street.

It was 1993, and he had just become an independent contractor.

"I didn't have a shop. I didn't even have a truck. I was driving a 1973 Thunderbird with my ladder on the roof, Puerto Rican style," Gonzalez recalls. I didn't know what I was doing."

He does now. Gonzalez, 48, and his wife, Maribel, 42, own R&M Ornamental Iron Designs, a Cramer Hill shop that custom-fabricates security gates, doors, window guards, handrails, and fences.

"I like having my own company," says Gonzalez, who also makes custom dune buggies. "I can build you a little handrail or a three-story fire escape ladder. I'm a creative guy."

Not bad for somebody who arrived in Camden from Utuado, Puerto Rico, without much money and even less English in 1990.

But simply saying that the Gonzalez family worked their way up doesn't do justice to their early days, when dinner was sometimes a couple of Cooper River catfish.

"I got a job as a helper at a place in Camden that built security gates," Gonzalez says. "They did welding, and I said to myself, 'Let me see how this little spark thing works.' "

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From Puerto Rico, now welded to Camden