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AI: Well, now, about this same time, you and Helen were starting your family.

GY: Yeah.

AI: And so will you tell me a little bit about your children?

GY: Let's see. We were married in '45, and this was 1950, '52, yeah. No kids. We were working.

AI: Oh, and excuse me. And did you move to El Cerrito in 1952?

GY: Somewhere around there, yeah. About that time, 1950, I started to work. We had enough money saved. Being a domestic, we didn't have a car, so we had from here, we were very frugal people. Saved money, no expensive... so we had about $2,000 in the bank. Started from scratch. And Helen grew up in, in, well, in a tiny home in Modesto, but much of her life was spent in a hotel because her parents had a hotel in Stockton, also. She just had a room, and all her friends had houses with a lawn. She just had a hotel room. And she dearly wanted her own house. And that was her, down to it, an obsession on her part. So when we moved to Berkeley and had some money, said, "Let's find, start looking for a house." And, and she really pushed that. I didn't think too much about it, but she pushed, so we'd go out, weekends, we'd look for lots, and, and that was '50, '51, '52, so there were quite a few lots in and around Berkeley. And we searched and found one in El Cerrito Hill. And when you looked down, you could see the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge, et cetera, et cetera and the lights at night. It was just real wonderful piece of property . But in, on the deed, it said: Not to be sold to persons other than the white race. I'm not sure what the wording was. Not to be sold to blacks or whatever. There was that stipulation. Well, the owner of the property, a young Italian family, actually, several brothers owned the property, so he was ready to sell this -- choice is his. He said, "I don't care. I don't care." So a real nice guy. So we bought that property for about $1,700, $1,700. That's pretty good, huh? And, but it's all relative because my annual salary -- the first year at Washington School was -- one year now, $2,500. So that piece of property was, ate up most of the year's savings -- that wasn't a savings, but the point is it's relative to, to my income.

<End Segment 40> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.