Bill was from Poteau, Oklahoma and it was just a little town.  Everyone was poor then and Bill’s father worked for the railroad.  His mom and dad wanted to get out of Oklahoma and they finally moved to California around the dust bowl days.  I don’t know exactly, but his father left them alone for awhile when he was young and they had it very tough.  That never really left him and he turned to alcohol too much.  His grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee Indian so his father was half and Bill a quarter.

His mother was one of 22 children.  Back then, they didn’t keep track of how many were multiple births, like twins or triplets.  They were on something like a reservation.  There’s a picture around somewhere. I don’t know if Aunt Jean has it but it’s the 22 kids.  I thought was like a family reunion because there were pictures of babies and all the way up to young adults.  And, you know, there were several old looking people.  I thought it was like brothers and sisters, but it was like the two parents with those 22 kids and some of them looked identical.  Some of them, there were like threes and fours of them that looked close together look-wise and age-wise, and so we never knew if they were twins or triplets or whatever in that group.  Anyway, that was his mother’s family.

We had some tough times like when Bill was in jail at one time.  I was ironing for money back then.  I ironed clothes for other people.  I got to where I was making a lot of money doing that.  I helped Guy through college  with ironing money.  I started that when I was in Santa Ana.  To start with I charged a dollar an hour, and when I moved up here to Sacramento, I charged a dollar thirty-five an hour.   Then, it got to where I just charged what I wanted to.  If I thought it was worth more to the person, I’d charge more.  I had people that lived over here in these real ritzy homes, I had a lot of those coming in and they had a lot of money.  For them, I wasn’t cheap but I did a really good job and they kept coming back.  It wasn’t that they didn’t want to pay it.  They would bring it back regularly.  One that I remember is Leroy Green, who was state senator and I did their ironing for years.  I made good money the last two or three years I was ironing because I was charging what I considered outrageous prices, but for the right clients, it worked.

One tough time I had was I lost my baby.  I miscarried at about five months and that was very disappointing to me.

Later on in years, Bill had a stroke and he was in the hospital.  Before that, we had an explosion when he was working on a car and he was burned real bad.  He was in the hospital for several months around that.  When he had his stroke, it affected his whole right side.  He managed to get back the use of his hand and his leg so he could get around.  That worked until towards the end when he had to use a wheelchair all the time because he couldn’t get around.  Towards the end, Colt, his grandson would have to help him up out of the chair and into the wheelchair.  I mean, he couldn’t do it himself.

On Bill’s last day, Colt had gotten him up and Bill said he wanted to go to bed.  So Colt got him up and took him and put him in the bed.  Bill said, “I need something.”  And he didn’t say what it was, and he kept digging at his mouth. And so Colt asked him and said, “What’s the matter, Grandpa, what do you want?”  Bill couldn’t say anything but he kept digging at his mouth.  And by that time, I had started down the hall, and I got in there and I said, “You want your teeth out?”  “No.”  He could talk plain enough to say no.  And I said, “What do you want?”  And he kept digging at his mouth and then all of a sudden he just was gone.  He went into a coma and then he passed.