<Begin Segment 35>

MN: Your father had this Thunderbird he really loved.

AM: Yeah.

MN: Can you tell us that story also?

AM: Well, little before he set about getting a car, I happened to know this Taul Watanabe in Gardena and then Bruce Kaji and I was doing some things for him in Gardena, and then they had a friend named Les Eichenberg who had a Ford dealership in Gardena, so I happened to go over there and I was looking around and I saw this Thunderbird that this Eichenberg dealer had. And then I, and it so happened after I saw that car I went back to the studio and my father said, "I want to get a car," so he tells me he wanted to get a sports car. He said, "Maybe Jaguar or something." So I thought, oh my gosh, Jaguar is such an expensive car, I thought, so I told him, "You know, I just saw a Thunderbird in Gardena. Why don't you go look at that? You might like it." So I took him to Gardena to look at the Thunderbird and he liked it so much, the one that he saw, he says, "I want to buy that one," he says. And it was a white Thunderbird. So I told Les Eichenberg and he was so happy to hear that my father wanted the Thunderbird, so, "Sure, I'll give him a good deal on it," so he decided to get that and, boy, was he happy with it. He just drove from then on every day. Just to drive the car he would go to the studio, you know? And he would never let anybody else touch the car. In fact, I was about the only person that, he would let me drive it, so every thousand miles I, from then on I had to take the car all the way to Gardena to get it serviced and, boy, that was quite a ride for me because I would never have any other chance to drive that car. So I used to look forward to getting the thousand mile check up on the car because I was able to drive all the way to Gardena in that car. He was quite happy with that car, so he drove it 'til he couldn't drive anymore.

MN: Is that the car that you drove during the Nisei Week parade when your father got honored?

AM: Yes. So he was picked to be a grand marshal or something like that in the parade, and so he sat on the back of the car, on the backseat, and I drove the car for him through the parade.

MN: So you got to drive that car at that time.

AM: Yeah. [Laughs]

<End Segment 35> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.