<Begin Segment 64>

AI: So you had decided you were going to be coming back out to the West Coast, and also, you had been going with a fellow for a while.

PB: Yes. And I said... he was going to go to work for Boeing, and I said, asked him if he was prepared to get married, because I wasn't gonna marry someone that didn't have anything, and he said he had saved enough money and he had bought a new car. He had just bought a new car, and so we were, we got married in Chicago, and I had just bought my '57 Chev, brand-new car, I had it on order, and as soon as the car was ready, we drove out.

AI: And so that would have been at the very end of 1955 then...

PB: Uh-huh.

AI: ...that you drove out to the West. And well, that was, that was wintertime already.

PB: Oh, it was a horrible winter. That winter, it was one of the worst winters. We came Columbia River down there, sheet of ice, solid ice on the road. In fact, shortly after we left Chicago, our car flew off the highway and if it wasn't that my husband was a very good driver, I think we would have turned the car over, because we went right off the highway altogether. But he turned the car, and we got back on the highway. It was really bad.

AI: That's scary.

PB: It was one of the worst winters that they had out here.

AI: Well, so after you got back out to this area, where did you two settle? Where did you live when you first came back out here?

PB: Oh, he, he had rented an apartment. I think that was... let's see, what was the name of the apartment? Star Apartments, I believe it was. It was on Eleventh Avenue, right across the street from the Fujin Home where Pat was born. And it was a small apartment, so I wasn't exactly happy to live there, because I had sent, had some of my furniture sent out that was coming out on the train. But then in the meantime, this thing happened with the money with my mother, and Mother accused Jack of taking the money. So right away, there was that bad feeling, and he felt bad, so he went and sold, sold his car to get the money to repay my mother, because my mother said there was three hundred dollars cash in there. And of course, we said, well, why didn't she tell him that it was money? But she didn't want to tell him because her mind was kind of funny at the time since she had been having strokes. And so I had the postal department go through quite an investigation, but they had no way of checking because at that time, they hire a lot of extra help for mail delivery, and I found that a lot of my mail was opened. They had been ripped open, so we knew that somebody in the delivery system had opened it.

AI: What a shame.

PB: But that was a total loss, 'cause we had no way of proving that there was money in it, because, of course, Jack didn't know that it was money, so he didn't insure it, he just sent it plain mail.

AI: That's right. Oh, too bad. Well, now then eventually you left the apartment and moved to a house.

PB: Well, I moved once to another larger apartment, but then by that time, there was so much discord that I was ready to get an annulment. But then I thought, I had my furniture coming already, and if it wasn't for that, I would have gone back to Chicago, I think. But I had already sent for my furniture and it was on the way, and I thought, "Well, maybe things will work out," so I stayed.

AI: And then was it then at that point that you moved to the Mount Baker area?

PB: Yes, I wanted to live in a house, so then I wanted to buy a house, but my husband didn't want to buy a house. So he said, "Well, it's up to you. If you want a house, you can buy it with your own money and keep the house for yourself." So I bought this house on, up in the Mount Baker area, and I really liked it there because we had nice neighbors and fruit trees, and there were flowers and we had a view from there. And it was really a very nice place to live. But then the neighborhood started changing, and I'd call the police and they'd say, "Well, you can fence the area or you can buy a dog and keep the dog in the yard." And I wasn't about to do all that; why did I have to fence the area? And I thought, well here, for the first time, I have my own property and I can't do anything because these kids would come in and the minute we'd leave the house, they'd come in with their bicycles and they'd ride around the house and they'd climb up the fruit trees and jump down in the flower beds. Sometimes we'd just go around the block and they're already there. So...

AI: So you decided to move farther out.

PB: I decided to move again, and that's when I found this place on Cloverdale Street, which was, seemed like real country then. The road wasn't paved and there were blackberries across the street, it was all empty lots, there was a lot of blackberries, no houses. And it seemed like it was way out in the country.

AI: Well, Cloverdale and about what? Was that near...

PB: Between Beacon Avenue and Martin Luther King Way, now, mid-way between.

AI: Which, of course, now, you wouldn't recognize it because it's all...

PB: It's all developed now.

AI: Yes.

<End Segment 64> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.