I didn’t really have a girlfriend in high school. I met my girlfriend when I got out of the service. Her uncle and aunt were good friends of my folks. They said they had a just the girl for me.

Her name was Shirley Dutra. I went out with her a few times. She was taking care of her grandmother and she was working for the telephone company. Families were close in those days; you took care of your old folks. You didn’t put them in a rest home. Shirley wanted to go to Heald college but she couldn’t afford the $40.00 a semester so she went to work. She had to pay her own way to the train. I would pick her up and take her home from the train. While riding the train a few times, Shirley fell asleep and woke up in San Jose. I’d get the call to go pick her up in San Jose.

I had quite a business with tractor work and farming and I needed someone to take care of the paperwork and the bills she took it over. We made quite the team.

I was twenty-seven when we got married and she was twenty-five. She was from a Portuguese family who had a dairy. She was pretty close to her grandmother. Her grandmother lost a foot from diabetes. She was always over there. She was from Mountain View. When we got married, we rented a house for forty dollars a month.

Then when they raised the rent to fifty, we decided it was too much money. So I built this house I live in now. I only paid nine thousand bucks for this land. I remember thinking I didn’t know how we would ever pay for it. But I said what the heck, let’s try it.

My wife and I used to go up to Fisherman’s Wharf, out on number nine. We used to go out there. We parked in the front where the crab pots are. Two dollars and forty cents you would get an assorted shell that had abalone on it, it had a salad, a Miller and an ice cream. She used to eat that all up. When I was courting her we would go once a month. She was a good woman.

We had three kids. Cathy, Linda, and Michael. Michael lives across the street in my mother’s house. When she passed away my brother lived there and when my brother passed away, they gave it to me and my sister.

I could have used the money but I thought myself: “I’m getting along fine with my retirement income, and I can still work.”

So I gave my have to my son who just went through a divorce. He had lost everything.

I hope that if I run out of money they will come and help me!

I just hope I can keep going. I don’t like losing what I have lost. I’ve lost my wife and my puppy. I had a few Mexicans beat me up.

Now I do a lot of pruning and tractor work for old man Olson and his cherry orchard.

My wife has been gone since 2002. In 44 years I never cashed a check or went to a bank because she had always taken care of the finances.