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JF: I think if, you always, always hear when you're, your age of you folks, that health is so important, and I sure have noticed that in the last, about the last three or four months. I've had some pretty serious things wrong with me, and I've been very, fairly weak, and mostly there's a certain anger and frustration that comes with that, that you can't, you can't do what you really think you ought to be able to do. And it's, there's this, of course you've heard the story about the man who says, "If I'd known that I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself." Well, I always tried to take good care of myself, and I stopped smoking years and years ago. I got my wife to stop smoking. And I've been trying to get all my kids -- well, none of our kids smoke right now.

My son John was heavily into marijuana at the time when it was fashionable, and he tried to get me to try it. And I said, "I don't, I just don't need, it, John." He said, "It makes food taste better. It makes music sound better. It makes life just so much better." And I said, "I don't need it. I'm fine. My food tastes good to me. I can listen to all the music I want to hear. And I just feel fine. I don't need anything to give me an, an uplift." And I still feel that way. Fortunately, they've all, eased off of that.

But John was living in California, and he had a woman who was, he was doing repair work with -- she lived out in the valley somewhere outside of Hollywood. And he had all of this marijuana growing there. And John, I told John, he had three expensive marijuana plants from Mexico. And I said, "John, I want you to get rid of these things right now." "But Dad, they cost me so much, and this is such excellent marijuana." I said, "I want it out of the house." So we had this big three-story house, and every once in a while, I'd get up on the very roof, climb up the roof. And there was a flat place there, just, it was wonderful. You'd just look out over the, out over all of Lake Washington and the mountains and everything. So I go up there one day, and lo and behold, here's these three marijuana plants. So I picked each one of 'em up, and I threw it as hard as I could out the front yard, and of course, they smashed into a million pieces. And I left them there. Well, John came home. I don't know where he'd been, but he came home, and he found these. And he said, "I'm leaving. I'm running away from home." I said, "Where will you go?" He says, "I don't care." He said, "Somebody'll take me in." He says, "You've ruined so many hundreds of dollars worth of my marijuana." So I says, "Well, okay." And Harriette, Harriette was trying not to stop him, but her heart wasn't in it particularly. So he's gone for about five minutes, and pretty soon there's a knock on the back door, and it's John. He says, "Can I borrow $10 for gas?" [Laughs] That, that kind of changed the whole thing around. So he, after a couple of days, well, he was staying with a friend and he came back.

JB: So, some of your lessons of fatherhood, might have been some of the most significant...

JF: But it was, having all these, these kids we had, all of our kids were four or five years apart. We had this big house, and we had eight bedrooms, so we had enough room that each child had his own area. And they all, always had friends in and so forth. So we pretty much had a lot of people with us all the time, which is, when I think about it, apparently went back to my army days when I was happy surrounded by other people. Because I like nothing better than having a lot of people around. I don't know.

I guess we'll just, I don't know anybody who wants to live forever, but I don't know anybody who wants to die, either. And it's kind of, it's really pretty profound, you know? I mean, you figure, I'm eighty-one years old. I'll be eighty-two in January. How much longer do I want to go? I've got a friend who's eighty-four who can't walk because he's lost his knee, and his knees are virtually given up on him. I've got another friend who's younger than I am who has diabetes who's lost one part of, part of his right leg and a good part of his left foot. And the thought of death is there, but you certainly don't want to do it yourself. You don't want to take your own life, and yet you don't want to get beyond a certain point where you're virtually a walking invalid. Which is what my friend George is. And he was one of the most active guys I've ever met in my life, and here he can't do a damn thing except hobble around his room. He can't play golf. He and I were commercial fishermen together. He couldn't even begin to climb aboard a boat. So all he has to do is just look out the window and watch people do what he used to do. And at some point that's not compensation enough. Yet there's that question of how long you want to go.

JB: Well, Joe, we all wish you good wealth -- or good health, sorry.

JF: Thank you. I wish you health.

JB: Yeah. Thanks so much for coming to do the interview.

JF: That's an important thing.

JB: Because I think we'll finish with that. And thanks again, Joe.

JF: Okay.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.