<Begin Segment 20>

HM: But anyway, as time progressed, my brother was kind of getting concerned too, because they had taken all of his equipment, but he did have his test equipment. He had a vacuum tube volt meter that he purchased the summer before. That was his pride and joy. He had a whole bunch of gear that he was using... like, a capacitor measurement system which was the first in his group to have anything like that. And then he had an inductance measurement device and this was all in his... piece of equipment. He thought something was gonna go haywire because his equipment's now all gone. They (the Feds) were asking things, like turning in your cameras and turning in your radios that had short wave on it and turning in all your weapons, and stuff like that, for the community. So he figured there's gonna be something going on. He told me he wanted me to make this case for him to put this equipment in so that he could haul it around in case he wanted to use it at somebody else's place this would be a handy way to travel with it. I think he had some inclination that something was going to happen, I don't know, he never said anything at that time.

I wanted to make this box for him, so I told this Jewish kid this is what I'm going to do. So I made a deal with him. He really liked the sailboat that I had been making. I had been making this thing for a long time. I put a lot of hours in it. And at that time this guy Oates, who was one of the many training instructors, was a sailboat enthusiast, model sailboat enthusiast, and it's one of these sailboats that sails by itself and will turn by itself because of its rigging. It was made up of veneer mahogany. And you know, if you did it right, it's a work of art. I had the thing almost finished except I didn't have the rigging done and I didn't have the top panel and the top surfacing done. This Jewish kid kept eyeing this thing, and I kept thinking to myself gee, I'm not into sailboats and stuff like that, and maybe my brother's box is more important. And so I said well, "If you help me with this box, if you want to pay for the material I got into the sailboat, we'll make a deal." So we agreed to that. When we started making the box he says, "You know, you should have a place in there that they can keep things that you don't want other people to have." I says... it surprised the hell out of me! [Laughs]

TI: Sort of like a secret trap door or...

HM: Yeah, he was talking about a false bottom and that's what we incorporated into the design. I thought to myself, "What the hell am I doing this thing for, we don't need a false bottom." But in case we might need it, well it might be interesting to have. So we incorporated it into the design. False bottom and the other side had kind of a funny area where we could locate things. And I thought, "Gee, that's kind of strange." The other thing my brother wanted was, he wanted a case, another, it was like a suitcase size stuff. So we made that one, except I selected the veneer, the wood for the thing to make it really look good and the pattern and all this kind of stuff. And then they started the Bainbridge people being moved and things really started coming in line. This Jewish kid was much more perceptive than I was. And when we finished the second project, I had it with the natural finish on the thing and the instructor said, "Oh my, this is what I'd like myself." [Laughs]

TI: Does this second one, this larger suitcase, did that also have a false bottom?

HM: Yeah inside, as we were building this thing, we could make it without having any other problems by adding additional compartments. So it came time to put the final finish on, he says to me, "Paint it black." I says, "We selected the material, we selected the grain, the very fact that we have this thing we have to do it with a clear coat on the thing." He insisted, "If you guys are going to go someplace, you don't want that thing to stick out. Paint it black." I told Mr. Escher, the shop teacher, I wanted to paint it black. [Laughs] He says, "You must be kidding!" I remember this instance. He says, "You must be kidding. You don't paint that thing black." So anyway, we went around for a couple days and I told my brother I was going to paint it black and he says, "Well, maybe that's better way to go. Do it."

TI: Because at this point, you had realized...

HM: Because he had realized, at this point, that we're going to go. It was a matter of time because the Bainbridge Island guys were goin'. And yeah. Within a month we were gone. We did paint it black. It was mortifying for me to paint it black. It was a work of art.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.