I’m Spanish – Basque on my father’s side. The origins of the Basque people are unknown. My blue green eyes are telltale. The DNA is different from any known race on earth.

Of course after the Indians, the Basque people were the first settlers in California. 240 people left Sinaloa, Mexico; about half of them were teenager or younger. A thousand miles later about half of them reached what we call today the Presidio of San Francisco. That was June 27, 1776. At that time everyone divided up the available property.

The Berryessas owned Napa – Sonoma, which later had a valley called Lake Berryessa, and we owned the Santa Clara Valley. Other people owned various other areas: the Castro’s and others. These were land grants from the King of Spain.


How My Mother and Father Met

My mother was Elizabeth Weiss, from a German family. I think my parents got together when my father was going to Saint Joseph’s grammar school. His best friend was Slim Andreis, who, by the way, also ended up a millionaire. He owned a wooden floor contract in business in San Jose. It still operates this day.

My Father was an electrician. He left school around the fifth grade. He was told that the family didn’t have enough money for him to go to school. He was a tough, smart man.

He became a millionaire by the time he passed away on November 22, 1973. That was the anniversary of the day that John F. Kennedy was killed. I was showing a film in class about JFK, and I got a phone call to come to the office, where they told me my father had died. I was teaching at Irvington High School. I taught there from 1969 to 1991. I love teaching. 

Slim Andreis and Dad used to go to San Francisco; they would get Wall Street newspapers and went to the best hotels where the ladies went by. They got all dressed up so that they would make a good impression as if they were rich businessmen. That way, they got dates.

One of them got hold of a woman in San Jose named Jean Weiss. She had a sister named Elizabeth Weiss, who would later become my mother. They began to go on double dates, and eventually they both fell in love and got married. That’s how my Mom and Dad got together.


Vigilantes Exact Harsh Justice after High-Profile Murders

Mom was a family person. However she did work at different places such as Hart’s department store, which no longer exists. There’s a very tragic story there. Hart’s son was held for ransom, and was later murdered. They dumped his body into a creek near the Dumbarton Bridge. The police finally tracked the killers down, brought them to San Jose, where they were imprisoned.

I believe it was November or October of 1933. It was about one month before I was born. Some vigilantes stormed the jail. They went inside, took these two guys out at Saint James Park, strung them up, and took photographs. Hundreds of people were watching. There were so many people there that the cops couldn’t even get close. In fact the chief of police was in on it. They took a blood oath so that the Hart family would not suffer any more. These guys didn’t want to leave that up to lawyers.

Not long after that, I was born. It was December 31, 1933

I was raised in San Jose, and I had an older sister, and a younger brother. It was the early nineteen forties, and my father was working at Ames laboratory, when he left, went overseas, and went to Hawaii. He got a good job there at Pearl Harbor.

We worried about him; especially my grandfather. He was Alvina Berryessa, and he didn’t like the idea of my father over there with all of these beautiful Hawaiian girls. He was retired, but he put his money together and paid for a trip for myself, my sister, my brother, and my mom to go to Hawaii and stay with him.

By that time, my father looked really sharp and had a mustache. When we got there we went to a place called Jack Lane, where we lived. We were all there for nine months, but it seemed like years. We had a coconut tree in the front, and the backyard was unfenced. There were Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiians, and we all loved each other. We would share food.

I ran around without shoes and I was called “Bullet Bob” because I was so fast. I even began to talk broken English.

My mother would say: “Bud (that was my nickname), where did you go? What did you do?”

I used to talk pidgin: “me go there.”

My mother would say “please speak English.”

I would say: “I talk English now.”