Back in those days, I mean, kids respect everybody. You never saw any of these people killing each other or anything. I mean, it was just a livable town. Like I said, I enjoyed every bit of it.

Then as I got older the Krauts came in – well, I hate to say this, but the university came in and just changed our whole town around. It’s hard to explain but it was just a complete turn around. We are not used to it. It makes it rough.

We never went to the boardwalk or hung out at the beach? We never had a chance. My dad is from the old country. They work.

When I was eight years old my dad bought a five acre ranch up there off of Meder Street. He bought this ranch there and made a chicken ranch out of it. So, my chores to do – before I went to school in the morning and when I got off of school at night, was to feed the animals, grab the eggs, and at night time take then in, have them cleaned. My mother and sisters would do that, and I would grade them when I got through feeding them and all that stuff. So, naturally I never had any chance for sports. I knew nothing about sports and I hate that. But, I did tell my kids to get your sports in. “Get to be civilized,” which I never had a chance to do.

I survived, don’t get me wrong, but my dad said, “You don’t get money by watching TV.” Well, we didn’t have a TV, but listen to the radio. “To make money you gotta work for it.”

My brother helped us out until he went into the service. My sisters worked at the Debenetti packing shed. They worked there bringing home money until they got jobs where they could make more money. And, of course at that time you don’t keep the money for yourself. It went in the pot for the house; to mom and dad, not to you. That sort of hurt me because when I started working at the tannery; like I said, I was 15 years old and I never seen a check. They gave it to my dad automatically. Of course that doesn’t encourage you to keep working.

But, even then back in the 40s your kids – if you got into trouble, and there weren’t very many cops around at that time. The cops would come by and they knew everybody and they would tell you very nicely, “If I can’t control you I’ll get your dad down here”, “Yep, yep, yep!” and they would!

Of course it didn’t help matters. My dad would come down and straighten that out and said, “If you don’t understand I’ll make you understand!” Yes dad, you know?

I didn’t get in trouble as a kid. Not real trouble. Just pretty much behaved myself. But my dad, with as strict as he was, you had to be respectful of him. I never got hit by him or my mom, but I mean, he’d grab you by the neck enough to scare the heck out of ya!

But, life was different, and like I said, that’s when the university came in here and they started getting wild. Then you got these wild kids from out of town and they come in here. It’s amazing how 10 people can change the city of Santa Cruz.