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BN: So if I'm getting this, just to go back with your uncle, he left engineering to go into gardening, basically? Presumably the money was better?

DA: I have to assume that.

BN: That's interesting.

DA: Yeah, I remember I dug up this one tree, and took me a couple hours or so. I later saw the bill, and I had never seen any bill. And this is like in '63, '64, he charged that guy five hundred dollars. I'm thinking, that's a lot of money back in those days, five hundred dollars. [Laughs] Well, I guess gardening can't be profitable.

BN: Were you paid for this work?

DA: Of course not. [Laughs] Not five hundred dollars. But that wasn't, I didn't worry about that. You know, it was family, right? You're helping out your uncle, and he turned me on to McDonald's.

BN: Well, there was your payment.

DA: Right? That was my payment, and Downey, right, first McDonald's was out there.

BN: That's right.

DA: And the other thing I got as a snack was onion rings. I'd never had onion rings. And I forget where he got it. But I said, "What are these, Uncle?" "These are onion rings." "What's that?" "They're just fried onions." "Eeew," I'm thinking. "You should just try one." The rest is history, I love onion rings. [Laughs]

BN: Did he remain a gardener for basically his entire career, subsequently?

DA: Yeah.

BN: Interesting.

DA: And he was the nicest uncle, really nice. In fact, Chris, my wife, is doing a little children's book on my uncle, actually. Because one of the things he did was, he has two girls, and one year we had those carnivals back in the day, and you'd get these little ping pong things, balls, and you throw them and you try to catch little goldfish. Well, he caught a goldfish, right? He brings it home for his two girls, and he keeps that goldfish and feeds it, makes sure it's, takes care of it, that that thing lived for about fifteen years.

BN: Whoa.

DA: And he kept getting a bigger and bigger, you know, thing, and before you knew it, he had this thing living in one of those fifty-gallon trash cans filled up with water. And he had a little pump going, give a little oxygen. That thing got this big. [Laughs] A little goldfish that was that big, grew, I mean, it must have been about three, four pounds of goldfish. That was the kind of guy he was.

BN: That's a funny story. What was the fish's name? Had to have a name.

DA: You know, that's... I'm going to have to ask my cousin.

BN: It's got to be the title of the book. But you mentioned he had two girls, which is why, probably why you're assisting him rather than them. [Laughs]

DA: Right. [Laughs] Yeah, the girls weren't going to go out and help that much.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.