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AC: So you said something about, you remember from Hillsboro.

JT: Hillsboro, big event, August, and that year I don't remember, but it was a hot summer. And a kid named -- I finally remembered his name -- Billy Longfellow lived in back of us about, oh, maybe four or five blocks back, and they had a house and a big barn. And Billy and I one day, playing with matches, and we would light the straw and then put a jar over it and see it go, sputter out. But that kind of got out of hand, and it went and it just exploded, and the barn caught fire, and that's when I took off. [Laughs] And I ran through Seymour's yard, "Hi, goodbye," and I went to an old farmer across the railroad tracks, Mr... I can't remember his name, but he raised goats. And I stayed there probably 'til eleven o'clock at night, and, of course, the family was concerned because they didn't know where I was. They thought maybe I'd perished in the fire. But that burned all the way down, because the fire department didn't have any, was not real capable. But I don't recall getting any reprimand or anything, just, they were happy that we didn't perish.

AC: Whose barn was it?

JT: Billy Longfellow's mother.

AC: His mother's barn.

JT: Yeah.

AC: And you were down on the ground floor, or up in the loft?

JT: No, we were down on the ground floor. That was in August, everything's so just bone dry, and that fire just...

AC: So when you ran to this, the farmer who owned goats, wasn't he a little concerned that you didn't go home right away?

JT: [Laughs] I don't think so. He was just an old bachelor, and smelled of goats.

AC: What did your mom say when they found you?

JT: I don't know. I think she was very relieved that I was alive. And that Billy Longfellow came through Beaverton about, when I just first got into practice. And I asked him, "Can you come out?" He said no, and I asked him what he was doing, and he was an antique dealer, so he was looking for antiques, and I think he lived in New Orleans at the time. Anyway, that was quite a, quite an exciting time. [Laughs]

AC: Did you have any other close encounters with fire or death?

JT: No, that was it.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.