<Begin Segment 6>

RP: Who was your coach?

CT: I can remember one. And he was the only one who was a regular coach, Mr. Knowles. He had one arm gone. Did that ever come up in any of your research?

RP: No.

CT: You didn't want to make a mess around too much with him. He was pretty tough. I think he used to play with somebody. And Rowland Fansler and I, we got an invite to go to Texas Tech on a, on a...

RP: Scholarship.

CT: Scholarship. But neither one of us was interested. We didn't ever follow it up at all, period. It just didn't, didn't appeal to us. But Rowland was a pretty big guy. Two-sixty, somethin' like that.

RP: Yeah, hmm. So you did get a football scholarship.

CT: Well I don't know. We just had that, that coach, Knowles, he, he...

RP: Helped...

CT: Yeah. He asked us we wanted to go apply for it or go down there, I don't know if we would have got it or not. But I, he put us in for it. Maybe yes, maybe no. But none of us, we didn't do anything about it, period. We wasn't interested.

RP: You said, was there another coach, too?

CT: Insignificant. I don't, I can't remember another one. I think it's... principal was a coach one year and Greers. But I can't remember another one.

RP: The gentleman who was doing a little research on this football game mentioned to me that there was a, a coach who was a minister in town?

CT: That what?

RP: Who was a minister in town, in Big Pine?

CT: Daily or Daly or somethin' like that? Yeah, it makes sense. But I don't remember his personality or anything about him.

RP: How about Mr. Knowles, what else, what else do you remember about him?

CT: Well the main, one time when the Rams were playing -- the Rams were L.A. I think at that time, and I don't know, I don't think, I don't think San Francisco had a team then -- but the Rams were playing somebody and he got us all together. By a couple a farming trucks and people's cars and everything. And he knew somebody in L.A. I think he was from that area. So we got to, to stay in their houses and in sleeping bags and stuff and he took us to the coliseum. Wyatt Tittle I think was playing then, I believe. We saw him and there's only, and that stadium held a hundred thousand people I believe. And there's probably about oh maybe a thousand there in the whole game. There wasn't hardly anybody. Because professional football wasn't much of anything then. We did see, well, you could just follow the ball up. You didn't have to try the binoculars or anything. You just follow it up in the stands. So I remember he got us there. That was one of the things that he had done. And everybody appreciated it. Not, he didn't take just the football team but he took a lot of the class, people that wanted to go also. So that was a neat thing.

RP: Did you also get into hunting and fishing in the, in the Owens Valley, Eastern Sierras?

CT: Oh yes. Fishing especially. Hunting, hunting, too. But fishing was a longer season. Yeah, I had a job so I missed out a lot of the hunting.

RP: Where did you work?

CT: At the Standard station. Jimmy Nicholas? Worked for him for three years I think.

RP: Seems like everybody worked for him at one time.

CT: Well, not everybody. I think I was the only kid that worked there for three years I was going to school, goin' to high school. And the reason I, one of the reasons why I got, got, that I quit was (Wayne) Dewieze, or I think it was Dewieze, no I won't say that. I don't know. I can't remember. But one of the guys that was in the service, was workin' for him when he went in the service, and he had to give him back his job, and he wanted to anyway. Excuse me, so I knew I was gonna lose it. So, then I quit. Excuse me again. But that's where I got to know all of the town people and the whole, the whole, Marianne.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.