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so that was always fun. Of course, mother and dad would always keep us busy too. We
would help with the gardening and all those kinds of things and knew how things grew
and so forth.
MD: I know you guys were really young, but did you ever help out in the fields?
SRL: No, we were told not to get involved with the workers while they were working, and no
we didn't. Later on when I was older I would help, well this was much later, it was after
WWII, I would help herd the cattle from the low lands up into the mountains over here
for feeding. But I was always very aware of what was going on, and when I was old
enough, I would help in the office, and after my dad was killed in North Africa in WWII,
mother was able to persuade her sister, Eunis Forbes and her husband,to come to the
ranch. And he was with Sespe at that time, he was one of the managers of Sespe, and he
was a real citr-ologist, and so he came and became our ranch manager, which was a
blessing. Because we still had a bunk house full of men and all the rest of the people who
were still working and all, so he taught me a lot of things, he taught me how to test the
soil and so forth. And I don't know why, but I was the only one doing these kinds of
things, the others all loved our home, but they weren't all that interested or involved with
the ranch itself, it was just one of those things that kind of happened, and so here I am.
And I'm glad I had that background.
MD: Going back to WWII, what was it like living on a ranch, because I know that others,
when I talked with my grandparents about it, they had the food rations and everything,
was life likr out here different on your own ranch.
SRL: Oh yes, we certainly did! Well at that point I was in prep school. Boo and I were in prep
school on the east coast, in Massachusetts. I remember Pearl Harbor came that year that I
entered school there, I'll never forget the principle having us come in and listen to the
radio while it was going on. It was very much alive to us, and then that happened in
December, and then the next December my dad came and told me that he was going over
seas to re-join the American Field Service. American Field Service was a volunteer
ambulance outfit that was started in the First World War, dad had joined that when he
was in Harvard, with a group of his friends, he was badly gassed. They all survived, he
and his friends survived but they were badly gassed. So when they got back and finished
Harvard and all, the doctor said, don't plan on a career in an office, get outside, go west
young man! Dad married mother and they took off for the west coast and came up with
Camulos. I very much remember the rationing and of course we had to take our rationing
books back to school with us so the school could feed us. Those were very memorable
days. When everybody finally came back, my brother finally came back from overseas,
from Germany.
MD: Which brother served?
SRL: Jerry, Jerald, my older brother. My sister was married to a wonderful, wonderful man
who just graduated from West Point. Dad was killed in April of 1943, and they were
married in June of' 43, because he was just, the war as still on and he had just graduated,
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