[Editor's note: What follows is a written transcription of my father's oral narrative of his life to date, as he tape-recorded it over a period of several months in the Year 2000.]

S U C H
H A P P I N E S S !

(It Don't Get Any Better than This)

"My Life is an Open Book--and Here are a Few Pages from It"

By Willis ("Bill") Bradley Givens

The Early Years

I was born in 1916, June the first, in the little town of Bowie, Texas. I was born in a log cabin, on the edge of Bowie, Montague County [between Wichita Falls and Fort Worth].

My parents died when I was two years old, and consequently I don't remember them. But I do remember a little of my grandmother, because my grandmother took care of me at that time.

The first two or three years of my life I really don't remember anything, but I do remember that my grandmother taught me how to read and write before I was four.

Mostly in pecans. We lived in a farm house out in the country. My grandmother had 100 acres, mostly in pecans.

(I'm sorry to kind of think and record at the same time, but I'll do my best to do this.)

Grandmother

Grandmother had 100 acres of pecan trees. Some were hard shell, some were soft shell pecans back in those days. There was a creek at the edge of our property--or her property--that adjoined my Uncle Joe's 100 acres. And my brother and I also had 100 acres, north of my grandmother's farm, which also had the old house that I was born in.

My grandmother couldn't do anything, because of her old age at that time. We just lived there in this old farm house.

The back of the house was a long, long, long porch, and she had canvas there which she could pull down to keep the sun out in the evenings. It was a wonderful play area for me when I was that age.

My grandmother was always quilting, and had a quilt in one room that she was always working on. There was a squirrel up in the attic who would come down and watch my grandmother while she was quilting.

I would try to catch the squirrel, and one time I really caught the squirrel, and he caught me, and he bit me on my little finger. His sharp nails went right into my finger, too. Actually, I screamed and yelled and all that stuff and hated the squirrel from that time on.

But my grandmother said poor varmints didn't mind biting people except for self defense. She taught me more about animals after that, and said you just have to respect them.

Many, many's the time when one of my uncles would come to see their mother. The things we ate the most were pecans, because we grew a lot of them. My uncle would take his knife and cut the ends off and slice through the pecan and it would come out whole and we'd have a whole bowl full of pecans, and we'd also have some cream to go with them.

Some of the neighbors would bring my grandmother food. We didn't have a lot to eat, but what we had was rich back in those days.

And all the neighbors around would take care of my grandmother, who was also taking care of me. It was kind of a fun thing to be back in those days.

We also had a cellar in the back of our yard, and my grandmother and I spent many a night in the cellar waiting for a cyclone to go over.

I saw an oak tree get stuck by lightning when we were living there. There's lots and lots of things I observed when I was very young and lived at that old farmhouse.

And my grandmother doted on me--all the time. I was her only charge to take care of, and we had no chickens to feed or hogs to slop or cows to feed. The only things she had to feed were herself and myself. So it was a close togetherness for she and I.

Again, you know, she taught me to do many, many things, and to respect things, and to believe in God, and all those things that grandmothers try to do with their children and grandchildren.

In a way, it was kind of a lonely life, but once in a great while some of her children would send money to her, and she and I would go visit them.

My parents died in 1918. They died because of the big flu epidemic that particular year. My parents died, and three of my grandparents died at that time, leaving only my grandmother.

I also had the flu at that time, but I pulled through. And like I say, again, it gave me the chance to be adopted by my grandmother, and she raised me until I was 11.

She had her hands full with me as a little child, and she was getting on in age. She really, really, really took good care of me. We lived on this farm, and again, we had no running water, we had an outhouse, we had no electricity, and naturally, no gas.

And like I say, I hadn't seen a single airplane in my life fly over. Once in awhile you'd see a car. We went a lot of places by wagon. We'd go ten miles from where we lived on the farm to the little town of Bowie.



Second Tuesdays. And many times I‘ve gone there by wagon with my Uncle Joe. Back in those days they had what you'd call a "Second Tuesday." The second Tuesday of every month, people would go in and swap things, swap pocket knives for something better, and this and that. And my Uncle Joe was famous for his horse trading, and it was said of him that he could go into town with a blade knife and come back with a team of horses because of his sharp trading. But that was, you know, hearsay, because I had no proof of it.

Again, it was fun back in those days because there were no radios, to speak of--and we didn't have one--and no televisions, naturally. Just imagine all of the things that weren't there that are here now.

It's nice to think back, in those days, what you did to improve yourself, and amuse yourself, for the days you were running around. It made you closer to nature, closer to the things that later on become awfully important to you.

My homes. Again, my grandmother and I lived on this farm until one day it was too much for her to take care of, and we moved to the little town of Bowie. [Click here to go to the little town of Bowie, today.]

Our first home there was an old three-story frame house about three blocks from my Aunt Martha's house. So my Aunt Martha could come up from time to time to see how we were getting along.

I had a lot of my toys up in the third floor of the house. I could play up there because my grandmother could not climb the stairs to see what I was doing. Every once in a while my Aunt Martha would come up and try to see if I was doing things that were naughty, in her mind.

My grandmother and I lived in that home for just about a year, I guess. Again, she had no money, and her children kept groceries in the cupboards for us, and so forth and so on.

Our next place we moved to was a little house about four miles away there in the little town of Bowie, and one-half of the house was occupied by my Uncle R.D.'s girlfriend [laughter]. Back in those days, most people had a mistress. But I didn't know it at the time. His mistress was very close to the family, and nobody knew back in those days what was happening.

But my grandmother and I lived in that one-half of the house. Again, we had no running water. We had an outhouse in the back on the creek. We did have electricity in this place. And it was about, oh, I guess, half a mile from what we would call [laughter] downtown Bowie, because Bowie was a small little town of about 2000 people–and all-all white.

Signs of really bad times. There was one highway that went through the town. And at each end of this town there was a sign on the highway–in great big bold letters (the sign was probably about ten feet by 20 feet) that said: "Any nigger caught here after sunup might not see sunrise the next day." And the same sign was on the road going into Wichita Falls, and also on the road going into Fort Worth.

Again, it was a lily-white town, and in this particular town you didn't have fountains saying "white" or "colored." But for me as a young child, in Wichita Falls, I went over to the colored fountain to drink because I thought it might be colored water. My grandmother explained that colored water was for people with black skins to drink.

It was really, really, really bad back in those days, with the oppression of the black people . . . .

My grandmother and I moved to quite a few houses in Bowie, because, again, I don't know where her money came from. In 1925 and 1926, it was in the depression era. Nobody had any money, and almost everything was by barter. If you had a chicken, you'd share your chicken with the neighbors, and vice versa.

We lived about one and a half or two miles away from school, and I would walk to school in the morning and walk back in the evening. No one had any money. It was just amazing how much poverty there was back in those days. People were called dirt farmers. Everyone had 100 acres, but all they grew were maybe some vegetables for their own home, or maybe to barter for something from someone else. And it was really, really, really tough times.

It was back in the time when all the banks closed. And my grandmother had, I think, saved up $87 (and that's an arbitrary figure), and she lost that due to bank closures. It was rough times.

My uncle left his farm and joined my Uncle Joe in Houston, because Ford had opened an assembly plant in Houston and was paying people $5 a day to work there. And $5 back in those days went a long, long, long way. Later on, when I moved in with my uncle, he was making $10 a week working for the Houston pipeline. And raising a family of four people–four of his own kids, and me and my brother. So, it was just one of those things.

Church. My grandmother and I went to a lot of churches: Presbyterian Church, Baptist Church, Episcopalian Church. But my grandmother never did put herself into one church, because she disagreed with the philosophy of a lot of them. And I went along with her because I had, really, no choice, but I did learn to believe in God and Jesus Christ back in those days. (And you'll have to excuse me for saying "back in those days" a lot, because it all was back in those days, in 19 and 25, and 19 and 26.)

When I was living with my grandmother, and I was eight, nine, ten years old, I finally got her permission to sell papers there in the little town of Bowie. I was selling the Fort Worth Star Telegram and the Dallas Morning News. It was five cents a copy, and if I sold one, I got three cents of that five cents. And if I sold 20 papers, well, I made 60 cents, and 60 cents bought a lot of stuff.

We went to the store very little, because people just brought my grandmother things. But I never will forget the time we were in Bowie, and my grandmother saw a sign in the window of one of the grocery stores saying "New Sliced Bread." And she bought a loaf for, I think, a nickel. And it was the first time in my life I had ever tasted anything other than biscuits and cornbread.

A four-ounce Milky Way. I had a friend in middle grade school--his name was Percy Sellings--and his father owned the theater there in Bowie. And every now and then he would give me a pass to go to the theater. Every once in awhile he'd buy us some candy and--probably about a four-ounce Milky Way (three for a dime)--and that was the best thing I'd ever tasted in my life. And another thing he bought me one time was a nickel milk shake--a chocolate milk shake--and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. It was the most tasty thing I'd had in my life.

Looking back, when I was that young, everything was so fun.

I got a job at the Bowie Hotel, shining shoes and carrying luggage. And most people carried their own luggage, because I was so skinny they felt sorry for me. And one thing I did a lot of was play dominoes with the people who were there. I was very, very, very good at dominoes. And the men liked to play dominoes with me because I was really competitive for them.

And I got my glasses. During that time I got shot in the eye with a BB gun, and I needed glasses. But my grandmother couldn't afford them. And one of the men who I played dominoes with--a visitor at the Bowie Hotel--went out to see my grandmother and told her he would buy glasses for me. He would take me into Fort Worth to buy them, and stay overnight, and show me the train station. We'd go down by train. And my grandmother said that was awful nice, but she didn't want him to go out of his way to do that. But he told my grandmother that maybe one day--and back in those days they called me Willis--Willis can return the favor to someone who is down and out.

And I got my glasses. And it just shows to go you that there are a lot of neat people in this world, and you don't know until you just look around.

My mother had two brothers, one by the name of Frank, and one by the name of Elbe. Uncle Elbe lived in a little town called Petrolia. So did my Uncle Frank, for that matter. There were probably 85 people who lived in this dumb little town. And my Uncle Elbe owned a little restaurant. Back in those days, it was called a café. And a general store where you could buy groceries and clothing, and feed, and you name it, and a filling station. In fact, my uncle owned the whole dumb town. And he spent all his time in the café as the cook.

Once in a great while, he would let me come up and spend the summer with his kids. He had four daughters, and he liked having me around because I was the only boy for them to play with.

Later on, he had a little boy, name of Weldon. At the time I used to visit him I--I visited him, I think, for two summers in a row--I went out by train and he picked me up. The town was really a barren nothing of a town. No trees, and a lot of oil wells.

The holes were still there, and it was a wonder that a lot of kids or animals didn't fall into those abandoned oil wells.

As kids, we used to take great big rocks, and anything else, and drop them down those wells and listen for about three minutes before they finally hit the very bottom. And we'd climb up and down the derricks. All those things that kids should not be doing but, but ah, no one was around but us, so we did that.

And when I went home, back to my grandmother's, my uncle always sent along clothes. He had Florsheim shoes back then, and I had a pair of new shoes, and clothes for school, and all those things my grandmother couldn't afford to buy me.

So, in a way, I had a lot of help when I was a little kid working--I mean staying--with my grandmother. And it's fun for me to kind of look back, back in those days, at all the things that happened to me, and to really appreciate the things that did happen to me.

When I was about eight years old my grandmother and I went up to visit one of her sons in Hardborough, Oklahoma. He had 40 acres of farmland, and he raised broom straw. Broom straw is what you make brooms out of, and he had barns with slats to dry the broom straw, and it was a fun place for kids to play. He had five kids, and they were all older than me.

Eat the hearts out. My uncle also had a lot of farm animals, and he raised rattlesnake watermelons. He raised rattlesnake watermelons, and also blue moon and star melons. Really, really delicious. You would go out into the fields and just hit the watermelons with your fist and break them and eat the hearts out, and it was a nice thing to do.

My uncle also had a lot of farm animals. He had lambs and pigs and chickens, turkey, cattle and horses, and all those things that farmers had back in those days.

It was my birthday, and my uncle asked me what I would like to eat for my birthday. And he said, "How about some lamb?"

A bad memory. Without realizing what would happen, a few minutes later a little lamb came by and he grabbed the little lamb and cut its throat. Well, you can imagine what happened to me that night, because I didn't eat the lamb. All I can remember is the lamb's throat being cut. And to this day I have never really liked lamb. Just the thought of the lamb brings back the thought of that poor little lamb having his throat cut.

It's amazing what you can remember. And some of the things you forget, well, I guess you really should have forgotten. But I never did forget this poor little lamb having his throat cut.

But, my grandmother and I really did enjoy spending those times with her son, George. They had a really nice family, and I kind of hated having to go back to Bowie after visiting with those nice, wonderful people.

Uncle Joe & Aunt Myrtle

When my parents died, my Uncle Joe and Aunt Myrtle took Perry--he was three months old at the time--as one of their own children. They did not adopt him, but took him to raise, and little did I know that when I was 11 years old, I would also be living with them.

Rumor was that my grandmother did not have long to live, and people began to wonder who was going to take [hesitates] . . . Willis.

Nobody really volunteered to take me, and uh, I guess everybody drew straws. My Uncle Joe lost, and he came up from Houston to pick me up.

Before my grandmother died, she was sick, and my uncle took me to Houston before she died. After she died, I did not go to the funeral, because they did not go back to Bowie for her funeral.

But I never will forget the long journey from Bowie to Houston. And how sad people in the car were that they were picking me up to live with them. But it wasn't their choice at that time.

I lived with Uncle Joe and Aunt Myrtle, and went to [Milby] high school there. I graduated from high school with honors. And my Aunt Myrtle got sick and couldn't do anything, so I kept the house and did the cooking, and so forth and so on.

My uncle and aunt had four children: Ernest, Leota, Irma Lee, and Billie Jean. And they were taking care of my brother, Perry, and then me. So, that made six of us living in this little, itty-bitty house.

My uncle was making $10 a week walking pipeline for the Houston Pipeline Company. And back in those days, again, it was a real deep depression. So $10 was a lot of money, because millions and millions of people didn't have any money at all.

My aunt did the washing in an old iron tub. She put wood underneath it to boil the water, and made her own soap from lye and grease and stuff. She boiled the clothes, and used a broomstick to take the clothes out of the boiling water. And I used to help her.

Every once and awhile, she would get mad and hit me with the stick she was supposed to use to take the clothes out of the pot with. She did that about a couple of times, so one day I grabbed the stick and broke it in two, and told her never, never to do it again or otherwise she'd be sorry.

And she never, ever hit me again [sighs]. And later on she apologized and said she didn't really mean to hit me, but she would just lose her temper.

After I graduated from high school, I told my aunt and uncle I'd stay one more year with them, to take care of the house and family, and to help her with her work and all this stuff, to repay them for all they'd done for me. But after one year, I was leaving because I had my own life to live--and I certainly did not want to live it in Houston. I would disappear.

And sure enough, after one year's time, well, I told them I was leaving. I saved up $10 and packed what few little packages of clothing I had and answered an ad in the paper that said they wanted drivers and $10 to go to California--to help drive and help pay for some of the food. I met with the people, I think it was about in June, and we headed for California. He took my $10, and I had another $5 in my pocket for food, and we headed for California.

California

I didn't really know what was going to happen to me . . .

Aunt Jim. As we crossed the border to California, my past life crossed my mind, too. I didn't know what I was getting into. I knew I would spend some time with my Aunt, Jimmie Grace. She'd married a man by the name of Herschel. Her name was Tice, and she worked at an insane asylum in Norwalk.

Aunt Jim lived in the little town of Norwalk, a suburb of the Los Angeles area, and there were 3500 people living in the little town at that time. She and my Uncle Herschel both worked there at the insane asylum.

Norwalk was really a nothing sort of town, and there was really nothing--it was the heart of the Depression. People were making--if they did have a job--$5 or $10 a week, and millions and millions of people were still out of a job.

I didn't really know what was going to happen to me when I got there, but the people I was with dropped me off in downtown Los Angeles, in an area I'd never been in before. I caught a bus in L.A. to the little town of Norwalk. And I called my Aunt at the hospital.

. . . and I slept for almost a day and a half.

She picked me up at the bus station and took me to the asylum. She had a room there, and I went to her room. I hadn't had much sleep for several days, and I slept for almost a day and a half.

After I recovered from my sleep, it began to dawn on me: What have I really done? I've left Houston, I've left the place where I've known all the people around, even though it was hard living with my relatives back there. But I did have some friends. Everything was cheap back there, of course.

And, back there, I got a job at a roofing company, making three dollars and a half a week, and that really wasn't my bag. I went to work with a friend of mine, in a geologist place working for oil wells. He took core samples and analyzed them for how many billions of years old they were, and so on and so forth. But again, it wasn't my thing.

And I missed living with my brother for four years. He and I had fun times, at times. We'd swum across the channel together, and had plums to eat. We built a clubhouse and all those things that young kids do. And we'd found an old abandoned life boat. One of the freighters had gone by, and had it hidden in the bayous. And those kind of things, but they were kid things and, uh, I guess it was time to grow up and be a man.

I was there, and I had to take what comes.



Living with my Aunt Jim, I tried a little bit of everything. I worked picking black eyed peas, I worked on a thrashing machine, I worked in a little café, I worked in a grocery store--it was a one-man shop. I worked for three or four days for the Red Star Fertilizer Company. I did all those funny things back in those times, because jobs were really hard to come by, and the pay was nothing, really. The most I ever made was $10 for a whole week's work. And millions of people were still out of work.

Rancho Sespe. Finally, I did get a job up in Rancho Sespe. My Uncle Volley had a job working there. Rancho Sespe was a big citrus ranch owned by A. J. Spaulding and Company. My job was doing fumigation work, fumigating trees for black spiders and black scale.

I worked there, but the problem there was I lived in a kind of dormitory type thing, an enclosure with no roof at the top--kind of like a little closet with a single bed in it, and a little closet to hang your clothes. And we ate at the commissary and they fed us all our meals.

My job working for the ranch was doing night work fumigating trees. When the sun set, we went to work, and we worked all night, unless dew came in or the east wind would blow. And I worked there for a year and a half. It really wasn't for me. The people that ran the ranch wanted me to go to school, to take up agriculture and come back and work at the ranch as a full-time manager.

But again, I didn't really see myself doing that kind of work. But I did make a lot of money--sometimes I was making $12 a night, because I got paid by the tree. I got a penny a tree as a "puller" or a "flapper," or if you were a "taper" you got a cent and a half. If you were a crew chief, you got two cents. After awhile, I became a crew chief and I got two cents a tree, so I made a lot of money. And you didn't have any days off unless the east wind was blowing, or lightning--and you made money but you didn't have time to spend it.

Well, there came a time when we had a lot of east wind blowing, and the ranch decided not to do any work for ten days, and they gave us ten days off.

Alpha Beta. I went into Whittier to see my aunt, and when I got there I happened to go into a little Alpha Beta store. There was one kid running it, a man by the name of John Codd. [Click here to go to Alpha Beta.]

My endeavor with John Codd was that he was all alone in this store. It was a very small little store with wooden floors. Its boss, Amer Asher, was out sick, and the store was absolutely filthy. The floors were dirty and shelves were not stocked, and just a horrible mess. I asked John Codd, who I'd never seen before, boy this is a miserably dirty place, why don't you hire some help to take care of it. And he told me that his boss was sick, and so forth and so on.

So, my conversation kept going, and I finally asked him how much he was making to be the assistant manager there, and he was making $19.50 a week. So I told him I'm working a place where I'm making almost that in one night, but I'm tired of it, and he could hire me to clean the place up and I'd work for $19.50, same as he.

John Codd said, well, it was alright with him, but he said when Amer Asher came in he would probably fire me because they only needed two people to work there.

Well, to make a long story short, I went to work and I called Rancho Sespe and told them I would not be back. I would be up to get my clothes and thank them for the time they had put in me.

Albert and Hugh Gerrard had been operating food stores in Southern California since 1900 and had been early adopters of a self-service system in 1914. Their Triangle Grocerteria (at 329 West Second Street, Pasadena) began arranging groceries alphabetically in 1915, the beginning of the "Alpha Beta system".

The Alpha Beta name was first used for the Pomona store in 1917. By the next year, seven stores were operating under this name. Alpha Beta Food Markets incorporated in 1929. --David Gwynn ©1999-2001 http://www.groceteria.net/alphabeta/index.html

And I went to work for Alpha Beta. I worked there three weeks, and Amer Asher came back to work and fired me. And as I was walking out, I passed by the produce department in front, which was run by a young man by the name of John O'Neil. He had three men working for him and they were making $10 a week. They were open in the morning from 8 to 6, and closed on Sundays, and the guys were working about 60 hours a week and making $10 for doing it.

So, as I was walking out after Amer Asher had fired me, John O'Neil said, "Why don't you come to work for me?"

And I said, "Well, I'm not going to work ten hours a day doing this kind of work."

He said, "I've watched you work over there, and you're a hard-working young man. I'll give you $19.50 a week if you'll be my assistant manager."

He said, "What do you know about produce?"

And I said, "Well, I know about as much about it as anyone else."

And I went to work for John O'Neil as a produce assistant manager. And I worked there real hard for about a year, and he kind of almost adopted me. He had three daughters and he would invite me every Sunday to go to his house and have dinner and visit with him. We would play Pangini, a game you play with eight decks of cards.

And I really enjoyed the O'Neil family. Pat O'Neil and Sug O'Neil and a little girl named Tootsie, who was what they called a spastic. She couldn't speak and she couldn't understand it, and she couldn't really walk, and she had a little scooter she scooted around on, like a roller skate thing, and it was a delightful family. I felt like I was one of the family.

And I worked for John O'Neil for a year plus. But one day I told him, you know, I haven't any education other than high school. I really believe I should go back to school--go to college--because otherwise I'll just always be an assistant manager for you in the produce business.

And he thought it was a brilliant idea, because he'd always kind of thought of me as an adopted son. And he got me an appointment with the president of Alpha Beta, Mr. Hugh Gerrard, who took some time explaining why a college education is so important for getting promotions and good jobs in all kinds of companies.

Whittier College. I went to work for John O'Neil. I'd work ten hours on Saturday for $10 a week to work part of my tuition off at Whittier College, which back in those days was $300 a year. [Click here to go to Whittier College.]

I made a deal with Whittier College to work moving pianos or mow the grass during my recesses and hours off. I worked out a deal with a man named Jack Feral to run the Campus Inn. I could wash the dishes at night for this Campus Inn.

I'd bus dishes five nights a week for seven day's meals. I could have the same meals as the sports guys. If they had steak, I had steak. I also helped Mrs. Hadley at the rooming house--the room I was staying in was at her house. I mowed her lawn. I stayed at the YMCA in Pomona for a year, then at Mrs. Brown's rooming house, for $12 a week. I also worked out a deal with the gas company to clean out their place. I got $3 a week for doing that.

So, all in all, I was really a busy young man. I really had too much to do, and not enough time to study. I was very fortunate that I had an excellent memory. I did not have to take notes, and I made a deal with my professors that I did not have to take notes if I could be in the top 10 on exams. And it worked well for me because I was in that category in the tests. And to this day I can remember what happened many years ago, and many of the details.

Basic English. I really enjoyed going to college. And I certainly enjoyed basic English, where you had 60 operative verbs to use, and a vocabulary of 300 words. If you made a speech using these words, even a three-year-old could understand it. And also the president of a company and a dictator, because the words are very easy to understand.

I used the basic English philosophy all the rest of my life to communicate in words so people could understand me.

And I also learned that I had to do a little bluffing to see what you could get away with without somebody calling your bluff.

And many times, if you talk with authority, people wouldn't call your bluff, but thought you really knew what you were talking about.

After awhile, John O'Neil got transferred to Pomona to a bigger store, and he asked me if I would like to go along. I told him I would have to find out. I didn't have a car, and a move to Pomona was a new place for me. I also would have to change schools--colleges--lots of things would have to be reviewed and thought about. But eventually we worked out a deal. I went with him to Pomona, and I stayed at the YMCA.

I ate my meals out at a little restaurant in the morning and lunch. I worked 40 hours a week for Alpha Beta, and I went to school just part-time. After awhile the doctor told me that I should either quit school or quit work, because my eyes wouldn't take care of it. ‘Cause I'd had quite a few operations on my eyes when I was in the Whittier area. I had four. And I didn't want to go through that again. I finally decided to quit college. I was going to Pomona Clairmont.

So I quit and went to work full-time for Alpha Beta, 40 hours a week. A little while later the company thought I was good enough to manage a store, and they moved me to a little store in Monrovia, as a manager.

My problem was that, as a manager, you were a slave to it. This store was open from 8 to 7, and you had to be there early in the morning to get the wet rack ready and do all the trimming' so you had to get there at 6:30. And at night time, to close, you were there til 8 o'clock--so it was a 14 hour job. And the big pay was $35 a week. Big deal.

After awhile, I gave myself a raise, and the company was rather irate about it. But I told them I could be a slave for 40 dollars but not 35 dollars. And I worked there for a little while longer. I stayed with a young couple, called Gay Arnold and Gil, and I had a room in their home. And after awhile, I decided I should move on to something else. I went to work as a night stocker for Alpha Beta at a store called "number one" back in those days, on Atlantic Blvd. The store had no doors or windows, but was an open-air market, and stayed that way until World War II started, and with the blackouts they put canvas around it to pull down at night if you had a blackout at night--you were forced to do that back in those days.

So, I worked there for a long time. Not a long time, really, but it seemed like a long time. And I finally decided I should do something other than what I was doing, because World War II had started and a lot of my buddies were being drafted and joined.

They refused me because of my eyes . . .

I tried to join but they refused me because of my eyes, and again, feeling guilty, I decided to go to Houston and work at Brown Shipyard Company. My brother informed me that I could get a job there, because all the ship builders were making deliveries as soon as they finished, and they needed people desperately. Because so many of the young men and even older people were in the military, and labor was scarce. [Click here to see a 1944 Navy ship built at the Brown Shipyard Co.]

So I drove back to Houston and went to work in Brown Shipyard. My job was like a steam fitter. Primarily, what I'd do when they launched from Houston all the way to Galveston was to see if anything was wrong with the ship on the six hour cruise down, and the six hour cruise back. I started out fitting it for the mission it had been manufactured for.

On the top deck alone, there would be sometimes 600 people--just on the top deck. Our instructions were just to keep moving, keep moving. All I did was move around until they said they were going to launch the ship and go down to Galveston and back. That was my primary function.

I worked at that for three months and felt really guilty. I decided I should quit because I was making pretty good money, and I wasn't really doing anything except going out on these ships after they were launched.

And I got a telephone call from John O'Neil. And John had opened up a market in Whittier. He'd bought some Japanese people out because when World War II started, the Japanese people were put into concentration camps. And anyone who was doing business in the L.A. area, they were automatically rounded up and taken away.

The Box Market. So John O'Neil, I guess, gave them ten cents on the dollar for this produce stand at the Box Market in Whittier.

One of my friends, Joe Sims, had been working there. He was drafted into the military and went to India. So, my friend John O'Neil called and said, "Why don't you come back and run my produce department for me?"

"I'll go to the produce market and buy the produce and bring it out to you, and you run the market," he said. "I have four guys working for me, and I'll give you $50 a week."

So I gave him a call back and told him I have a problem. "I'm in Texas, and there's a gas rationing program going. I'm only getting four green stamps a week for gasoline, and I can't get too far that way."

But he'd bought a citrus grove and he had a farmers market token thing, so he sent me enough gas tokens to head back to California with. And I took him up on it, and I became the produce manager at the Box market.

I did love the produce business.

It was a fun thing for me because I did love the produce business. I'd worked for John O'Neil before, and John had always given me my way on things. He liked the way I could get things accomplished. And also that I could make a profit doing what I was doing.

Lee Strong. So things worked along fine, and, meantime, I'd hired a young man by the name of Lee Strong. Lee Strong was a young man from Washington, D.C. who had moved into the area.

Helen

And he was a bright young man, and hard working, and we got along famously. And one day I noticed there was a young lady coming into the bakery department, which was also a leased out department. And the young lady's name was Helen--Helen Strong--Lee Strong's sister.

After awhile I conned Lee into--he and I had been doing some things together, going to shows, boating and things--so I asked him to bring along his sister. And after awhile, well, I asked Lee, "Why don't you just stay home and I'll take your sister."

Had it not been for Lee, I would never have had a chance to meet Helen.

Up to this time, everything has been "B.H."--"Before Helen." From now on things will be "With Helen." And I would like to tell you how I'm going to preface things from now on. I never believed in mixing family life with business. I would like to go into my private life--as a father and a husband--and the things that people do as a family.

Later on, I would like to discuss my working habits with Alpha Beta, and also with Mothers Cookies. But I don't like to mix them all together. It's just not right for me.

So, I'd like to take off on what's been the next journey of my life--my life with Helen. I'll be back . . . .



Finally, I did get Lee to agree not to go with us on a date, and I really, really did love it. I just really loved being with Helen. And after five or six weeks I got up the nerve to propose to her. And we went to a beach in Long Beach, and we were laying on the sand and I proposed to her.

And I told her, you know, I said to her, "I'm not rich and I don't have any money to speak of, in fact, the only money I have is, I still owe my doctor on some eye operations. But I do own a car, I own my own clothes, but I promise you that I'll make enough money to support you, me, and a family if we have one. And I just love being with you."

And she, uh, said "Yes!"

I guess that was the most happiest time of my life, and it still makes me feel real good just thinking about it.

And from that time on I never really had another best friend. Helen has always been my best friend. All my friends that I'd had were in the past. From then on, Helen and I were a couple. We loved doing things together. We loved eating out together, watching television together, we just loved being together.

It was a fun thing, a fun place . . .

And we lived in a little house that was owned by one of the men who worked for me there at the Box Market, a guy by the name of Sam Reynolds. And his daughter also worked for me. But Sam had this little house, and he had a little apartment attached to his garage. And, uh, a real small little place, and the back door opened into the garage. And open up the kitchen, and zip, you were in the alley with only one step. Beside the steps, about a foot by 10 feet long was of dirt, and we made a little garden there and put some plants in it.

It was a fun thing, a fun place, and Helen learned how to cook there. Because, according to her, she didn't know how to boil water, and I didn't know much better, but we really had a fun time while we were living there.



After awhile I told my boss, I said, "You know, now that I'm married, $50 a week won't cut it."

"I'd like to propose to you a new way of doing things. I'd like to have six percent of the gross take, which would only be about $60--only about a $10 raise--but maybe it will give me an incentive to do more."

That was probably the best deal I made in my life, because within six months, some days we were doing over $1000 a day. So that gave me $60. John would give me $50 a week, and then at the end of the week he'd give me a different check. And it was a very lucrative deal for me, because sometimes we'd do as much as $4000, and that was 240 bucks, and I had a $50 draw and I had $190 coming. And it worked out fine for us.

David. And during that period of time we were fortunate enough to have a child by the name of David. It changed our life forever, because when you do have children it does change your life.

After David was born, we had to think about moving, because the little house we lived in was very, very small. And Helen shopped around for houses and she found one, out on the edge of Whittier, in a little street called Midway, because it was midway between Whittier and Pico Riviera. And it was three streets away from a little place we called Jim Town, because it was lived in by Mexicans who lived in that part of the world. [Click here to visit Whittier, California.]

John O'Neil was always a great man in my life . . .

We found a house that we could buy for $5000, and we didn't really have any money to speak of saved away. And I got my boss, John O'Neil to loan me the down payment. John O'Neil was always a great man in my life, because I could always turn to him, and he was always kind of my mentor. He loaned us money for our honeymoon. I borrowed a hundred dollars from him, and he gave me some days off, too. We went to Laguna Beach for three days on our honeymoon.

Again, John was a great man on these things, and I worked my tail off for him because of it. Had it not been for John, we wouldn't have had some things. He also had a truck I could borrow from time too time. He also had some gas tokens for his ranch, and we could use them to go down to the beach and those sorts of things, back in those days.

No furniture, period. The house we moved into was, like I say, a little Spanish flat-topped house. It was probably around 1000 square feet, plus it had a livingroom and a diningroom and fireplace, and two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a little, little kitchen and a little, little breakfast room. Since we moved from a furnished apartment, from Sam's rental places, we had no furniture, period. We bought a little crib for David, and that's all he had in his room, was a crib. We bought a box springs and mattress, and I got some pear boxes to put up to put our box springs on. And that's all we had in our bedroom. We had no rugs on the floor, and no furniture in the livingroom or diningroom.

We didn't have any refrigerator. John's daughter, Sug gave us an icebox that you put ice in, a 25 pound block of ice. And we kept that for awhile, because, again, in the war years, you couldn't buy refrigerators or anything else. Everything was rationed, canned goods, gas, almost everything, because of the war years.

But we got along fine. And we didn't know what we were missing, because we never had had it. We really loved this old house, and like I say, we had a lot of experiences in that house. The backyard had not been taken care of. The man who had owned the house had buried his trash in it. He had chickens back there. And after many months of hard, hard labor, I made the place into a beautiful backyard.

Flagstone. I went to Bloomington and got flagstone to make a flagstone patio out back, and flagstone sidewalks in the front. But again, the house was an old house, and one day, we had a septic tank in the front yard, and it quit working. And the hook up to the city sewer cost money we didn't have. And again, I borrowed some money from John O'Neil.

Fire. Also, one day, a fire we had in our fireplace--I got empty crates and lugs and apple boxes from the Box Market to burn in the fireplace, and it makes for a real hot, fast fire. And it caught the chimney on fire, and we had just painted the livingroom and diningroom. We had a slanted, oval type ceiling in this room, and the plaster was dented, so it took a lot of work to paint it, and I went up on top of the roof and the fire smoked up our ceiling.

But again, we were young and we loved the place, and had lots of parties there, just by burning lugs and apple boxes in our fireplace, and living on our bare floor. We didn't miss any of these things because we didn't have any. It was a fun place to live, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Little by little, we got some furniture, first for the livingroom, then for the diningroom. And finally got a used refrigerator--got rid of Sug's icebox--and everything worked out fine for us.

In the meantime, I had a problem with my job. I had to leave John O'Neil, because Joe Sims got back from the war. He had to assume the management there, and I opened up a little market called the Whitleaf Market. I went into business for myself. And almost worked myself to death.

I went to work about six in the morning, and came home at seven or eight o'clock at night. And again, I didn't get to see David in the morning, I didn't get to see him in the afternoon, and things were going the hard way.

Finally, I made a deal with John O'Neil again. I went back to the Box Market to be a manager, not in name, but in actually managing it, because Joe Sims could not turn a profit and John wanted me back.

I was sneakily running the business.

I kept my market and brought my brother-in-law, Lee Strong as the manager of it. John O'Neil paid me $75 a week, same as Joe Sims, but he also gave me another $100 a week under the table, because I was sneakily running the business.

And it all worked out fine, and life was fun again, and we had a little more money and bought a little more furniture.

I made a decision one day to change jobs and change my way of doing things. Because John ran an independent, all I could do would be one day to manage it or buy it from him. So I thought very seriously about going to work for Alpha Beta.

But again, wages were miserable. Most I could make as a retail clerk was $37 a week. That's not a day, that's a week--$37. And I was making $175 working for John O'Neil. And also, I was making a little money in the Whitleaf Market, until I sold it.

I talked it over with Helen, and we finally decided that it might be the best thing to happen for us. We'd have to adjust our living back to that kind of a deal.

And before making that decision, she and I decided to go on a vacation before I went back to work for Alpha Beta. And we went to San Francisco. We took $100 and decided to come back when we ran out of money. We took the train the train up. Helen's sister took care of David while we were gone, and we had a great, great, great, great time.

We ate three times a day, or five [laughs], but it seems like every time we stopped, we ate. And we had a picture taken while we were there, that is famous in our family today, of us walking down the street, me with a business suit on, and Helen with a hat on, just like we were San Francisco natives.



And again, we certainly always enjoyed each other's company.

We really loved being together. We loved talking over our days together. And all those years, and even to this very day, which has been over 57 years. And no knock-down, drag-out battles. Once in awhile we had some disagreements, but we knew when to stop so we would still speak together.

It was a fun, fun, fun time, living with Helen.

(It's starting to rain. You can probably hear it. It's funny to have rain here [in La Mesa] in September, but it's now really raining [laughs].)

1638 Rideout Way. Helen's mother had moved up onto a little hill, called Rideout Way. She'd bought a house up there, several years ago, and uh, there was a house right next to hers that was for sale. And they wanted $10,000, or I think $10,500, or something like that.

And it was on the side of a hill, was three-quarters of an acre, and had 70 avocado trees. And it had two stories. One story was on the street side of it, and one story was down the hill, where the avocado trees were. And the bottom story was unfinished, except for one room. And, uh, we decided to buy that.

And, again, right next door was, we'd have to live next to Helen's mother. But Mrs. Strong--I always called her "Mrs. "S"--she lived there, and was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful lady. After we'd moved in, and for several years after we'd been living there, it was such a comfort to have her next door, and to always be there in case she needed us, or we needed her.

And so we bought the place and lived there and did a lot of reworking of it. We had 70 avocado trees, and we ate the avocados. We made the place into a little rancho, and sold the avocados, and made a tax shelter for our avocado trees--a write-off.

Then we remodeled the house--made the front of it glassed-in. It was a beautiful old home, and we just loved it, loved it, loved it. And our kids loved it. They could play in the orchards, and we put swings up for ‘em.

And Helen and I were both really interested in community affairs. Helen had been a den mother for David in Scouting, and I was a Scout leader. We were active in church. I was a deacon at the First Christian Church, and also an usher, and a school teacher--a Sunday school teacher. And Helen worked in the kindergarten part of it with little kids. And, again, we enjoyed it. It was a good place to introduce our children to religion. And it was also a nice place to go on Sundays.

We lived there in this home, and after awhile we had some improvements made. We made some decks on the side of the hill. We hung a pool on the side of the hill. And it was a wonderful place for our kids to be, and we knew where our kids were, because our kids' friends would come to visit with them because we had a pool.

And fortunately, Helen never had to work, because that was our prenuptial agreement I gave her. I said I would make enough money to support us, and her job would be to spend it. And when we had friends around, I'd always remind her that she had done a very good job of spending the money.

But it was always a wonderful thing for her to be there when the children came home from school, even though they really didn't need her, it was a comfort for them to know that she was there. And it just made life more wonderful.

Again, like I say, I never mixed business with pleasure. I never had any pals with the Alpha Beta group. And I never had anything to take me away on the weekends from my family. I thought I was born to do nothing but work, but I did want to enjoy my life as a father and a husband, and a pal of my wife.

Again like I say, I had the best of both worlds.

One thing I've loved about being with my wife, Helen, is this. I worked for 23 plus years with Alpha Beta, and for about 20 something years with Mothers, and all of those years my wife never once called me on the job. She knew that I could do more work better if she didn't bug me while I was on the job. And I didn't have to worry about the house or the finances, because I knew that Helen was taking care of the children, and also taking care of the payments on the house, and the insurance, and those kind of things. It kept me from worrying about them.

So when I got up in the morning to go to work, all I had to worry about was work. And when I got home at night, well, I put all my work into the glove compartment, and stuffed it in the glove compartment, and when I walked into the house, I thought about family and not business.

And it made my life much, much easier. And I really love Helen for going along with me on that, because she took a lot of burdens off my shoulders by being the financial officer of the home.

We lived there on Rideout Way, took long walks around the hill as a family, enjoyed swimming together, hiking up the hill and down the hill, and doing all those things.

The bad thing about living on the hill was you don't get into too many sports, because if you miss a basketball, it will roll down five or ten blocks down to Beverly and Hadley.

And uh, you know, it's a long, long way, and who wants to walk five blocks to get a ball back? And I never was a great sports-type person anyhow. I never did have good eye-to-hand coordination. And so my children didn't inherit any of that from me, because I didn't have it to give to them.

But we enjoyed other things and just being together. We liked to go walking together. We put the swings up, and we had a pool, and we had a deck, and it was fun being a family. And also, also enjoying Mrs. Strong when she came over to visit with us, or vice-versa.

During this period of time when we lived on Rideout, we were blessed with more children. Christine and Susan rounded out our family of children. And, you know, Helen and I certainly enjoyed all three of these children.

Later on, Helen was very active with being a scout leader for our two girls' Brownie troop. And she was also a den mother for David when he first started. It was a great, great young family. We certainly enjoyed each other's company. I enjoyed playing with the children. I enjoyed playing in the avocado grove. We had some 70 trees, and lots of leaves for them to run around in. It was really a lovely time to be alive and to enjoy one's own family, which I missed so much of when I was growing up. Because I when I lived with my grandmother, I was the only young child there, and no one else to play with.

I really longed to have a family of my own . . .

And so you grow up a little differently. And I really longed to have a family of my own, and watch the kids grow up, and Helen and I were a part of it.

We lived in that part of the world until David almost finished high school, and I got transferred to San Diego.

In San Diego, I went down and worked for two months before I moved the kids down, and Helen. I lived in a motel for two months, and Helen stayed at our Rideout home and took care of the children. Helen would come down every other weekend to look at houses with me. And finally one day we found one, out in, out in the country. It had three-and-a-half acres of ground. It was a ranch-style house with a lot of built-ins, a built-in deck, two fireplaces, one in the den and combination kitchen, with a flagstone fireplace and a raised hearth. And an oversized fireplace, built-in appliances in the kitchen, and a built-in vacuum.

. . . it looked like billions and billions and billions of stars!

It was a lovely, lovely home. When we moved in, the first thing we did was, we got some firewood to burn in our fireplaces. Because we hadn't had a fireplace since we'd moved out of our Midway home, and it was a new experience for us. The first night we were there, the children run out and looked up at the sky. And since there were no street lights--because we were out in the country, and no houses within shooting range of our place--it looked like billions and billions and billions of stars! It was a lovely thing to behold.

We really enjoyed the house. I was busy with my work, and the kids were busy going to school, and we left Helen alone with just the dogs and our cats. And it was a kind of a lonely life for Helen for awhile, because we took her away from all her friends in Whittier, and her mother. But she dealt with it in her way, and some of the sacrifices she's gone through. But, you know, things kind of slowly worked out for the better.

And we thoroughly enjoyed that home. We had long walks up the hill to building sites, and our two dogs would follow, and I think we had about 22 cats, and all the cats would follow us up the hill. And the cats would run and play, and the dogs, and it was a lovely place to be.

We had a horseshoe pit, and we had a place where we'd play darts on the lawn. And it was a big place, with an acre in the front lawn, and an acre in the back lawn. We kept our dogs in a fenced area in the back. And we had a horse barn. And Susie and Chris wanted a horse, and I promised to get them a horse if they took care of a donkey. And we went through that piece of our life.

Again, my life, being what it is, I still do not blend my work life with my home life. I really made no friends with the people that worked for me, and I did not entertain them or invite them to my home. Our friends were people who were not in the grocery business. And where Helen and I could enjoy that type of pleasure, you know, of friends who would not be talking about the grocery stores, what they liked or did not like about it.

I was a district manager for Alpha Beta at the time, and I'd come down to San Diego to open up this division. And it was a lot of hard work. And thank God for Helen, because again, she did her job of making sure the kids were being educated properly, and that the bills were being paid properly, and I could concentrate on building up a whole new division for the Alpha Beta stores.

And again, it was wonderful. . . .

[Editor's note: This is the end of side 2 of tape 1 . To go to the transcript of tape 2, please click here.]