My full name is Bernard Lawrence Miller. I was born March 20, 1921 right here in Hanford, California. I had two older brothers but they have both passed away now. My dad was Theodore but they called him Ted. My mother’s name was Bessie.

We lived in Hanford about three miles north of town on the corner of Tenth and Alder avenues. My dad was the superintendent of the People’s Ditch Company. He served there for 33 years as superintendent. My oldest brother started working there when one of the hired men passed away. He got to be superintendent and he worked for the company for 38 years. So there was a Miller on the payroll of the People’s Ditch Company for more than 50 years.

My other brother was in the service as well. He was with the eighth Air Force. He was a Bombardier. One trip over Europe he got hit in the arm with flak.

So we lived out in the country and dad was a ditch tender. In those days we had neighbors who would kill a sheep or hog and they always brought us meat. There wasn’t any refrigeration and they couldn’t keep it forever, so this was a case of us having pretty good eating.

I graduated from high school in 1939. I was the student body president. In 1939 I went to Fresno state for three years. I was at Fresno state when the war started. I stayed in school until June, 1942, and finished up a year. After that I went right into the Air Force. I went in under the Service Pilot Act. To qualify under this act you had to have a private or commercial pilot’s license and more than 200 hours of flying time. I had my private and my commercial and 200 hours and I had passed the written test, but I had never taken the flight check.

Some army guys came through and check out our class of about 30 students. They picked four of us and sent us directly to Mather Air Force base in Sacramento.

I had got my pilot’s license through Fresno state CPT, or civilian pilot training. I took primary and advanced flight training and advanced training and had enough to get my 200 hours. I was just interested in flying. I would go on to the Airport at Hanford on Sundays and hang around the airfield. Once in awhile I would get a ride with someone. I just liked flying.

Ditch tenders deliver water to the farmers. There are four major users of the water that comes from the Kings River. The People’s Ditch Company served Kings County. They service to thousands of acres; a big part of Kings County. They also supply a lot of water to Tulare.

My mom was a housewife. She used to cook for the family. We always had two or three men stay with us. They were ditch tenders who worked with my dad. We had a bunkhouse behind our house. That’s where the men lived. In the summertime there would be eighteen or twenty men living there. They would clean the ditches and get ready for the next season. They got weeds and trees and debris off the banks.

During the summer for about six to eight weeks my mother used to cook for all the men. That was quite a chore: three meals a day for a bunch of working man. She earned so much a meal. It might have been one or $2.00 a day per man.

During summers I used to work on the ditches also. I would be at Fresno state and I would come home and work on the ditches. It was hard work. I also did a lot of fruit work: apricots, peaches, grapes. In those days everyone worked. All the kids in school could go out and get a job any place. Nowadays you can get kids to go out and work like that anymore. They want desk jobs!

One of the things I remember real well is that we lived on the ditch bank. We had this ditch running by us. We all lived in the ditch. We would all get in there and swim. On weekends we used to have 75 or 100 kids in the ditch swimming. Nowadays if they catch you in the ditch they kick you out. They won’t even let you get in the water and here we lived in it. We were raised in it. It’s altogether different.