We got up in the morning and worked, then went to school. We fed the chickens, rabbits, goats. We also had apricots and prunes and cherries. My dad would hire us out. I started working when I was about 9, drove a tractor. In those days there was no legal working age. We had about 35 or 40 acres that we took care of.

My dad made sure that we kept busy because he kept busy. If we didn’t have anything to do, my father would get the lime and cactus leaves and mix it together so we would whitewash the trees. They always had to be the same height. We had a nice looking orchard.

Also, we used to pump the water out of the creek. That creek used to run until September to August for sure. We ran an old Fordson Tractor with a pump on. This was Adobe Creek. We would pump all the water we could out of that creek before it went dry. We pulled fish out of that creek by the pump. Those creeks don’t really run anymore. I took care of those 230 acres above that Stevens Creek dam thing that they just bought. There are two beautiful streams that run up there. But these days they fizzle out in the summertime.

I remember Roosevelt saying: “again and again, we will not go to war.” I was picking prunes when he declared war.

Dinner was on the table every night at six o’clock. My dad used to listen to Gabriel Heater on this little green radio we had. No one had a television; we didn’t have any of this modern stuff. Gabriel was a news commentator.