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TI: Well, by the time you came along, your parents had purchased land.

LI: Right.

TI: And that was in terms of the Inaba family, this multigeneration, the first time someone in the family had purchased the land.

LI: Oh, yeah. And if it wasn't for my mom's ten thousand dollars that she had saved up, they probably couldn't have done that. But that really helped. But then shortly after they purchased land, they started popping out kids.

TI: But your father still farmed.

LI: Oh, yeah.

TI: And I'm guessing helped your parents.

LI: My grandparents, yeah.

TI: Your grandparents, your grandparents.

LI: And George was still around. And I think early in the game, some of the other siblings were still going to college.

TI: So about the time that you were born and your parents were having children, they owned a plot of land, I think 40 acres, and your grandparents were leasing...

LI: The 80.

TI: Eighty acres. So that's 120 acres of land.

LI: Yeah. And that was about all they had for a long time. My grandfather actually died in '65 or something like that. Probably could look that up. He died of a stroke. So my dad pretty much watched over my grandmother and my uncle George. My uncle George was, I guess, we would call him developmentally disabled. And so he was kind of slow, but he walked all over the place and he loved talking to people. All the animals loved him, I guess they could sense his kindness. And so he would always bring home cats or bring home extra dogs on his walks through the valley.

TI: But it was your father. So after your grandfather died in the '60s, he took over the farming of not only his 40 acres, but the other 80.

LI: Oh yeah, because he was farming prior to getting married. He was farming that 80 prior to that.

TI: And so probably, how did you, just talking about you, how did you help your father? 120 acres is quite a bit.

LI: Yeah. We had a tractor. By then, we had several tractors, you know. And as we grew up, we just did what we could. And my dad was a very hard worker, and when he was loading tomato boxes, he would set me on the seat of the tractor when I was six years old. And he just said, "Just go straight." So I would sit on that tractor and I would just do it straight. And if something happened, there was no way I could have stopped the tractor.

TI: You couldn't reach the pedals.

LI: Yeah, I couldn't reach the pedals, you know. And I don't think my legs were strong enough to do that. But yeah, I was driving that old tractor since the time I was six years old.

TI: Well, you talked about even at that age working in the fields, too.

LI: Yeah. I mean, we did everything. And we learned how to pull weeds and hoe and plant things, because we were the farm workers. And in my dad's generation, all those children were the farm workers. And so when we were fortunate enough to have the ability to hire farm workers, we had a lot of respect. And it wasn't like we were anything above them, my dad worked right alongside those guys. And my memory, as a young man, was we would be, my brother Wayne and I would be helping 'em whenever we can. But my brother Norman was a little smaller than everybody, and his job was to bring beer to my dad and the farm workers. And so at ten o'clock and three o'clock my dad would sit down on these buckets and have beer with his workers.

TI: You said at ten o'clock and three?

LI: At three o'clock, yeah. And I think Norman kind of liked beer, and so on one of the trips back, somebody didn't drink the beer, so Norman did. And when we came back, we found him asleep on the couch. [Laughs] But yeah, it was not bad times. We had a lot of good friends, and we had a lot of time to spend with my grandmother.

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