<Begin Segment 13>

RP: How long did your father work for the city of L.A.?

PF: Let's see. He worked, I think he retired in '68. So like thirty-eight years. It could have been forty (...). And (after) he retired Mom and Dad went dump digging. They went to Tonopah and Goldfield and Goldhit and Goldhill and Aurora and some places in Nebraska. And, oh boy, the best thing that you could find would be an old privy. And they had a long, or Dad had a long probe that he would push it down through the earth and if it scratched glass or metal then they started digging. And they have been to, oh, out of Keeler, (and we) in the old gold (tailings)... wherever there were gold mines that's where you found the old bottles and old, lots of old rusty stuff. And they enjoyed their life after he retired more than any time before, I think. That was a wonderful time for them. Dad passed away in (...) '87. And they had quit going maybe seven years before. (...)

RP: Your parents and you moved up into the Owens Valley just shortly after the city of Los Angeles had acquired most of the valley for a water supply.

PF: Yes, I think so.

RP: It was a very contentious period.

PF: Uh-huh.

RP: And of course the Watersons figured in that...

PF: Uh-huh.

RP: ...that scenario. Can you share with us kind of some of the attitudes and feelings that you grew up with?

PF: Toward the DWP?

RP: Towards the DWP.

PF: Oh yeah, people, especially people that came up from L.A. They didn't understand... well, and a lot of the Bishop people that moved up there that were latecomers didn't understand what the people in Bishop gave up when they sold to the DWP. And I guess they were in, they were in dire straits. And it's why they sold and the DWP was there to buy. And so why not? It was a buyer's, seller's market for them. So people that came along later, they were kind of disgusted with those people that had sold those houses, all those houses to the DWP and they, "We'd like to have that house," and they couldn't buy it. You know, until the DWP finally decided and I guess it was in 1940 that they sold. They sold a lot of them. Just not the one we were in. [Laughs] Or not the one we wanted. Dad tried to buy the one on Line Street that's now a doctor's office or somethin'. It's a big white house. Andersons bought it. They got there before Dad did, but that's the one he wanted.

[Interruption]

RP: Do you recall, you mentioned that DWP did sell houses later on.

PF: Uh-huh.

RP: Do you, there were other folks that I've talked to who share stories about remember seeing fires on the east side of the valley of houses that were being burned because the DWP didn't want the tax burden. Do you recall that at all?

PF: No, I don't recall anything like that back then. I've heard about those since, the later ones. There was one out toward Laws, I think, years ago that had that same thing happen. And, they thought it was probably arson but I don't know that they could ever prove it, or ever did.

RP: So for, to people who have the perception that the city of Los Angeles raped the Owens Valley, your feeling is that there was no rape at all?

PF: Well, no, I don't think so. I think they took advantage, but only because people were willing. But the thing that really bothered a lot of the people that were there for a long time was that they shut the water off in the Owens River and it went to L.A. And that, I don't know whether it was water that was for crops or just what the deal was. But it also dried up Keeler, that big salt lake down there.

RP: Owens Lake.

PF: All dried up (and then) shut the water off into Mono Lake and diverted it. (...) I guess there was such a big hew and cry that they finally opened that back up (into) Mono. It was drying up to where (...) it was so saline that (...) nothin' could live in it. You couldn't put a boat in it, it'd eat the bottom of the boat out. And so that was, I think that was the main thing that people had against the DWP and who, I guess whoever worked for them maybe. But my mom and dad had a lot of friends.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.