"At the time Pearl Harbor was bombed, I was working in Morenci in the drilling and blasting division, dynamite. Before I was married one of the first jobs I put in for, maybe 1937. Our main job was building the retaining walls in Stargo and later on the PD had builders, carpenters. I remember when the people start moving in there, they were all gringos. I already had a home I didn't pay too much attention (laughs). I always did [own my own home]. That was the first thing that I did. The first time that I bought a home, I paid three thousand dollars for it. Coming back from California, it was at that time that I got that house for three thousand dollars which is the same home that I had when Phelps Dodge bought me out and I had to go and live in a company home in Plantsite. I moved away from there when Ross was in high school. Sixty-five when my twins were going to high school then. I sold it [house] for $100. PD paid me so much. I think it was $1000. It felt great [to move to a company house]. I liked it better because they were better built and kept up by the company. They would, do whatever the house needed, they would do it. At that time it [rent] was $35 a month.

I was in San Diego for five and a half years. I missed the most was fresh meat [during the war]. I used to buy them [groceries] at the Safeway. [I grew] mostly tomatoes [in my victory garden]. We had rationing stamps. We used them all, all the time. At that time we just had a radio. We were lucky to have a radio, to own a radio. We listened to radio programs."

"The only club that I belonged to at that time was El Club Verde. This club, we used to make picnics, different kinds of picnics, and we used to make dances. At that time there were different people in the club. At this time they're all dead, people who lived in Metcalf.

I feel all right, I don't have anything against it. It wasn't so special (laughs), but it was growing up in a company town. It was all right. My best memory of my neighborhood would be where I lived the last time in Morenci. It was in 1977, the last time I lived in a PD home. Right there where we lived, it was called for the old mine, the Humbolt. Around there were different kinds of people, mostly Americans and Chicanos too, mixed. Cockings, they used to live in front of my house but they used to live in their own home. Eddie, y su brother, y su papá, todos, they all spoke very good Spanish. He was younger [than me] about a year. [His house was] across Burro Alley. El papá de Eddie used to run a pool hall. The pool hall was right there in the Longfellow Inn, underneath.

There were chinitos (Chinese) in Morenci. The only Spanish was the one that I worked with, el papá de Jimmy Fernandez. We worked together. He had two boys and three girls.

The cemetery was at Bunkers. La glorieta was the name of that cemetery [the old cemetery behind la Arizona]. It was mostly Catholic.

I think they should have kept Morenci. I don't mind it at all being called a man without a country (laughs). La pobreza (the poverty) of being in the great depression and then the war. I pay cash. I think if a fellow has the money, he should buy.

No complaints. I had a good life and up to now living with what I get as a pension, I think I'm satisfied. All I can tell him [grandson] is how I lived, how things were then."