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CC: Was there anything else you wanted to tell us about their relationship and how it evolved?

MM: Yeah, right. It's interesting because they did stay married their entire lives, and they had their fights and things, but I think I had more fights with my mom than they ever did together. Or if they did, I just don't remember their fights. I remember her telling my dad that he ought to get mad at me more often, that she didn't want to be the only one on my case all the time, and she always did say my brothers were easier to raise than it was to raise me. [Laughs] But I think that they had a really great relationship because in the end, well, not in the end, I don't how they were when they started going to the races. She made this friend who actually really liked her a lot, but she's already married. [Laughs] And my dad was very, I thought, very nice about the whole thing. And I think she kind of maybe used him because he drove, and he would drive us to Eastern Washington and he would drive us to different places. And my dad didn't drive. Once he tried to drive, and he backed into something that scared the heck out of him, decided never to drive again, so my mom had to learn to drive. So I was in probably middle school -- well, they didn't have middle school, it was junior high then -- when she learned how to drive. Or it might have been even later, I don't remember the timeline. But where was I going with this?

CC: About the races?

MM: Oh, yeah, races. So this person that made friends with her and my family, he used to come over all the time, Ernest was his name. He used to come over all the time and eat with us, and the kids, we couldn't stand him. But we knew that he had to come over because he gave us rides. But he introduced them to horse racing, and they both really liked it. My mom and dad both, and it was a thing that held them together, kind of, and they decided that instead of going out to eat, they would go to the races because they could get money back if they went and it was fun. Whereas if you went out to eat, it was gone. So they always cooked anyway. So they went to Longacres and that's where the whole family got interested in horse racing. And they talked about this, and that was one really fun connection that they had, they could talk about it and enjoy it. But there's a picture of my dad in the P-I, Post-Intelligencer, that's no longer around, and it's half a page, and a picture of him studying the form, racing form. And it was just, to me, an iconic picture because that's what horse racing, people who do horse racing, he's got this fedora -- is that called a fedora? -- you know, the hat, he always wore it, this hat. And it wasn't because he was bald, he just liked wearing this hat. Okay, and he's got his glasses and he's looking at his form and studying, but he made enough money on one race to, for us, or for them, to remodel the kitchen. So that's what they did, they didn't always just frivolously throw the money away, they used it usually for some good. So my mom was so happy to have that new kitchen.

VY: Wow, I love all the stories, that's fantastic.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2024 Densho. All Rights Reserved.