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SRL: Yes, a year and two weeks. Our birthdays are both this
month.

SL: Your mother was busy, wasn't she?

SRL: She was busy, yes. And they lost a child between.Barbara
and me. We always called him "Little Boy" but he was August
Alexander-after my father, and he's buried right over there.

SL: By the pond?

SRL: No, past the chapel, there's a little circle on the lawn.
There's a beautiful little bronze statue that I took.up to
the house on the hill because I was scared it would be
stolen. So many things were stolen, and this was one of a
kind.
300 0
SL: The house on the hill being ... your house?

SRL: No, it was built ... Ann is living there now.

CT: Marvelous house!

SRL: It was·built after the Second World War for my aunt and
uncle. After Dad was killed our foreman that Dad had
trained.to run the ranch for years, died of a heart attack.
So here was Mother, in 1944, the middle of the war, with a
bunkhouse full of men, and the vultures started circling.
So she made this disastrous marriage.

SL: Did he have any training for running the ranch?-

SRL: No. He came from Port Hueneme, a SeaBee. {Construction
Battalion] Mother ... during the war, and before the war ...
they had the Women's Auxiliary of.Something-or other in
Ventura. It was so cute .. These women had uniforms; they
had a ... place where all the service men came for coffee ...

SL: Like a canteen?

SRL: A canteen, in Ventura. The women used to get together once
a week and learn military etiquette, and they marched - they
marched! And they learned how to do all these things.
Mother would come home and she'd make us get up there and
she'd put us through the marching routine (laughs).

SL: She'd drive to Ventura to do that?

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