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Tom:——Tom Jones—— Maria:——Maria Malfavon—— Lulu:——Lulu McClellan—— Derek:——and Derek Wyant, student historians from the North Coast Rural Challenge Network, Voices of the Valley project in Anderson Valley. Lulu: We’re here today with Anderson Valley personality, Billy Owens. Thank you very much, Mr. Owens, for coming to talk with us. Mr. Owens: You’re very welcome. It’s a pleasure to be here. Mike: You’re known by the people in the Valley as the one who can do the train whistle. How did you start doing that; how did you learn? Mr. Owens: Well, when I was a kid back in Oklahoma, we lived right on the corner of the block, just out of the city limits and the road——there was a gravel road in front of our house which——not wide as the highway is now——and ‘bout like Peachland Road——have you ever been on that road? Mike: Yeah. Mr. Owens: A road like about that width and everything. So just ‘cross the other side of that road there were thirteen sets of railroad tracks, right in front of our house. And the trains were going from Oklahoma City to El Reno and probably on further than that all night long——all day and all night those trains were going by and I kind of did it from that, but I made some terrible sounds before I got to where I could do it. (Everyone laughs). Maria: Can you do it for us? Mr. Owens: I think so. (Clears his throat). I’ve had a little cold here lately, but we’ll try it. (Makes train sounds). Maria: (Whispers ‘Oh, my God’). That was cute! Mr. Owens: I have did it better than that. Lulu: So you just taught yourself? Mr. Owens: Yes. Just from hearing those trains and my dad used to holler at me——it would be a train sometimes——and he’d——’Bill knock it off! It’s time to go to sleep!’ And it wasn’t me. Maria: Oh, cute! Mr. Owens: But I used to do it a lot better than I do now, but—— Lulu: So could you tell us more about your childhood? Mr. Owens: Well, I did a lot of——we always raised our own garden, our vegetables and things, and when I come home from school I had to go in and change clothes and take my new shoes off and go out and work in the garden, ever since I was pretty small and my dad used to tell me, ‘Bill, you see those tomatoes, onions, corns, beets, potatoes, squash, watermelon, cantaloupes, lettuce, cabbage?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, them’s mine. And you see all those weeds in the grass in there?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘They’re yours. Get ‘em out of my garden!’ So I’d get out there and start pulling and chopping the things, you know, and then I had to do quite a few chores. I was pretty busy after school every evening until Sunday and that was my day——I could do about anything then, you know, after the few chores of a morning. Lulu: What did you like to do on Sundays? Mr. Owens: I did a lot of fishin’, a lot of hunting, rabbits, and squirrels. I don’t think we had any deer in the place where we lived, so mostly rabbits and squirrels——did quite a bit of fishin’; we had quite a few kinds of fish. A little funny story about the fishin’. My brother and I went——we had a little single shot .22 and my brother was a real good shot, and I’d spend my money for soda pop or candy or ice cream and he’d——every penny he got he’d save it ‘til he got hiself a box of shells. And he was a real good shot. He’d throw a bottle up in the air and he’d hit it. And he got down——you know those iodine bottles——they’re real small, about like your thumb—— Tom: Oh, wow! Mr. Owens:——he could even get that. He was a real good shot. And we got our pole——we got our gun and a pocketful of shells and a gunny sack, if we got something, you know, to carry it back in. We didn’t shoot one thing, but we found this little frozen creek and there was big fish there, like that (gestures to show size). So we had a hatchet with us, a little small axe. We chopped it down and took a big string of fish home. Went hunting, came back and it was bunch of fish. And when those fish are froze in the water, if they stay in there…if you don’t…when it unthaws the oxygen that’s froze in the water and they’re alive. It sounds like it wouldn’t be, but they really are. Lulu: Wow! Tom: You mean frozen solid in the ice? Mr. Owens: Uh, huh. And if they thaw out right in that water then they’d still be able to swim right off. Tom: Wow! Derek: Dang! So how many brothers and sisters do you have? Mr. Owens: Fourteen. There’s——you want me to name ‘em? Derek: Yeah. Mr. Owens: OK, from the very youngest: Jesse, Louise, Jack, Gary, Ruby, Bill, Vera, Loyd, Freddy, and Virginia, Bernice, Cowetta, Slick, Leona and Herbert. Derek: Dang! Lulu: Wow…and were you in the middle or——
Mr. Owens:——there was——I think there was five younger than me. Lulu: So what was it like having that many siblings? Mr. Owens: Oh, it never was very quiet; you didn’t get bored very often, you know. Somebody’s always doing something or hollering or somebody thumping on a guitar. We all had quite a bit of work to do like milkin’ the cows and just doin’ it. Everybody pitched in and helped and we did a lot of canning. My oldest sisters——we didn’t have washing machines, didn’t have no refrigerators, had a big ol’ square icebox and you put a fifty-pound block of ice in from the top. Then my dad——if you wanted a little extra ice, had a big #3 washtub, put a piece of canvas down in there, put a block of ice in there and wrap it up. Put milk and butter and things around in there, keep it from spoilin’. And washing clothes, the older sisters takin’ care of the younger ones, you know. It was always pretty busy. Mike: What was the dinner table like with fifteen kids? Mr. Owens: It was like about twenty foot long! (Everyone laughs). Sometimes it could get a little dangerous. We always had to ask——if somethin’ wasn’t settin’ real close to you, you had to ask for it, because you might get a fork in your hand if you start reachin’ and grabbin’ things, you know. There’s a joke I used to tell ‘em that I couldn’t speak one word until I was seventeen years old. They took me to all kinds of specialists and everything. So one day we had a family reunion. About two hundred people made it and the rest of them couldn’t get there so…big tables lined up. All kinda food. Everybody talking all at once. And I said, ‘Would you please pass the biscuits?’ And they said, ‘My God, he can talk! Bill, why haven’t you said somethin’ before now?’ I said, ‘Well, up ‘til now I could reach everything! (Everyone laughs). No need to talk!’ My dad didn’t like jokin’ or nothin’, you know, at dinnertime. He’s pretty serious. He’d always come in and eat in a hurry and take off. My dad and I had to cut a lot of wood for the winter and we sold wood too. It was a dollar a rick. Two ricks is a cord, you know, like a cord of wood. Maria: Uh, huh. Mr. Owens: Had to cut it and deliver it for a dollar. Lulu: Wow! Tom: A dollar! Mr. Owens: And it was a lot of work. Things was pretty cheap back then. Derek: What other kinds of jobs did you do as a kid? Mr. Owens: Well, I dug a ditch for a guy one time. Wages was thirty-five or forty cents an hour. This cattle rancher, Grady Benson——I think, I was twelve-years-old——and he gave me a dollar an hour, had me dig a ditch about thirty foot long, ‘bout two foot wide. There was a broken waterline and it was leakin’ pretty bad, you know, real old metal line. And I was, ‘Boy, I’m makin’ all kinds of money!’ I did it in three hours, takin’ my time, you know, makin’ a little bit o’ money. I chopped cotton for thirty-five cents an hour. Two sisters and a brother, younger than me, we chopped cotton. We got thirty-five cents an hour. The guy only wrote the check out for thirty cents, so my mother went over there and she said, ‘Well, I know this isn’t much money, but the kids worked hard for that and you promised them thirty-five cents an hour. So this guy’s wife made him write the checks out again and we got our thirty-five cents an hour (chuckles). That was in ’42 and ’43——no, ’43 and ’44. Lulu: You were born right after the stock market crashed on Black Thursday? Mr. Owens: Yeah. Lulu: And so that must have had an affect on your life as well. Mr. Owens: Well, I was pretty small and everything. There wasn’t much work or anything. My dad would shoe a few horses. He was kind of a horse trader too. We always had——he had livestock, horses and cows, not many, you know. But he was always tradin’. He made a little money to get a big fat pig to butcher, or somethin’, you know. But there wasn’t hardly any work at all in those years. It was pretty hard to make it, so we had to raise everything we needed. We had our own——my mother canned two or three hundred jars of fruit in the summer for the winter. Lulu: Wow! Mr. Owens: And we butchered——we had our own smokehouse and had smoked ham and bacon. Tom: So what did you do for entertainment as a kid? Mr. Owens: Just ride horses and fish. If I could hear of some music playin’ at someone’s house, I’d always go over there. That’s about all I ever did really. Did a lot of ridin’, fishin,’ and… Tom: You said you had Sundays off and you could go do whatever you want on Sunday. Mr. Owens: Yeah, Sunday I could go horseback ridin’ with more friends, you know, or go fishin’ or anything. So on Sundays we’d ride; sometimes we’d ride all day long. And some friends would have a young colt that had just kinda greenbroke, you know, and we’d go ride them, you know. We thought we’s really cowboys. That all they really need after they’ve been on a colt a time or two, just ride ‘em everyday and handle, you know, and be easy with him. We used to do a lot of that. Maria: So what did your father do for a living? Mr. Owens: He was a blacksmith, a horse shoer, and worked in blacksmiths’ shops. They used to make buggy tires, and they made the spokes and the hub, and then they made the big metal band that goes around it. You get all the spokes sticking out like this, you know, (demonstrates) into the hub, and then you——there is a wooden deal that goes over——it’s in sections, fits in like that (indicates), and all the spokes fit in it, then this big metal thing that’s on the outside, you have to have it red hot. And the wheel is a little bit bigger then this metal deal, so they put it down around here like that, (indicates) and it burns. And it goes down there and makes a real good tight fit. Then they kinda cool it off, you know, roll it in the water a little bit. Lulu: So you helped your dad with it? Mr. Owens: Yes, I did a lot of handing him tools and turning the forge. You throw a horseshoe in here, and you turn this, and it makes the air come up from the bottom, you know, and it heats it. And sometime I’d get in trouble ‘cause I wasn’t watchin’ what I’s doing. If you see little bitty fine sparks coming out of that forge where you’re burning that metal, so I burned a few shoes, kinda got hollered at too. Then later on I shod my own horses, you know. Me and my dad and one brother for the RKO Pictures——you’ve seen ‘em on TV, says RKO, real old films; we shod a hundred head for those guys and my brother went with them to New York and Boston and Massachusetts and all those places. And he made real good money and that was in ’43 and he got fifty bucks a day and twenty-five dollars a day spending money. Derek: Wow! Mr. Owens: And he was with them for a couple of years, I think. He was a pretty good rider, and they called him Buffalo Owens. So we shod those hundred head of horse in front and trimmed their feet behind. There was someone going to shoe ‘em when they got to the destination ‘cause when your shoeing, if you shoe ‘em in front, it’s all right, but when they have their shoes trimmed in the back, when you ship ‘em, well, they’ll kick each other, you know, with the shoes; it could cripple one real bad. So someone had to know how to shoe them when they got to the destination. And we rode most of them, some were broke and some of ‘em wasn’t broke. Derek: Will you tell us about serving in the Korean War? Mr. Owens: Yeah, I went in 1951, January 5, and I got out——it was twenty-one months, I guess for serving time overseas. I was in the medics; I drove an ambulance taking the wounded to the hospital in Seoul, Korea. Sometime we’d——they call it on stand-by, like they say, they’d need an ambulance, you know, it might be twenty miles from where our company is. And a lot of times I was there ten to fifteen days at a time and you have to be ready at all hours of the night and everything, so a lot of times day and night driving going to pick someone up. Lulu: Were you ever in, like, danger? Mr. Owens: I didn’t do any shooting or anything like that, but like I said before, there was a couple of holes, like here is my windshield and then that cab comes on up here. There was a couple of bullet holes in the cab, but I——it could have happened going down that old rough road and you wouldn’t have heard it. I might not have been in it, I don’t really know. We was allowed to carry an army .45, the medics were. And they wasn’t supposed to shoot on either side at the medics that had a red cross on your helmet, on both sides, and on the front, and the top, and on your back and on your front. We wasn’t supposed to shoot at the enemies’ medics and they wasn’t supposed to shoot at ours, but probably some of ‘em did. Mike: Why did you move to California? Mr. Owens: Well, I had a couple a brothers out here, and my older sister’s been here since 1941. Cleo Clark lives up on Manchester Road. So they said there was a lot more work out here and better wages. So my dad and mom and all of us loaded up and came out. In 1945, we came out here. We stopped part of the year in Arizona, about sixty miles south of Phoenix, worked there in the grain harvest, and then we came out to Fresno and Madera, southern California, San Joaquin Valley. Derek: What kind of jobs did you do in Anderson Valley? Mr. Owens: In Anderson Valley, mostly just loggin’ and I used to——before they had the front-end loaders they loaded with the skadgets, triple drum loaders. It’s kinda like a sled and it has the motor sittin’ there and the big spool that winds the cable up on it. I had to climb this pole about——between seventy and eighty feet high, and then top it and limb it as you go and then top it, and put three guy lines, you know, to hold it steady from kinda out here——two out this way (indicates) and one straight out in the back. Put a strap around here and pull the main line, the haul back, and main block and everything, you know, and rig the tree. And then those lines went back down to that skadget deal. You unroll it off of the spool, put it through this pulley and then it goes back and goes on to another pulley drum——a drum over there. And they loaded logs with it, and I did that, and set chokers, peeled logs, and fell some timber. And I ran the loader a lot too, but I never did load logs, just cleaning up landings, bucking the logs and limbing them where the trucks wasn’t working there, you know. But I set chokers for a long time. Then I run the landing, bucking logs into the lengths they wanted, and limbing them, checking for rot and breaks. Did that for quite a while. Lulu: We heard you worked for Willis Tucker who we interviewed earlier; could you tell us something about that? Mr. Owens: Yeah, I peeled some logs for Willie; I’ve known him a long time. He’s pretty good guy. Him and his two brother—in—laws, Chili Bates and Bob Rutledge; they was in loggin’ together. And I worked for them, but I didn’t see Willie out there an awful lot. You know, he’d come out once in awhile. But to me he was always good to work for. My brother-in-law, Buck Clark, worked for him a long time; they always got along pretty good. He’s a good logger. He always, when he finishes——he takes a lot of small jobs that a lot of people can’t move their equipment into, you know, without costing a lot of money. And he takes his cat in there and does the loggin’, and the loader and loads it, and then he has a brush rake. He cleans everything up and it looks like a park when he gets through; he does real good work. Lulu: Have you done any logging recently? Mr. Owens: I quit workin’ in the woods in ’94. Lulu: Uh, hum. Mr. Owens: I haven’t done any——just cut wood and made some of my redwood split products, that’s about all I did. Lulu: Did you notice any change while you where working there or maybe even now. Mr. Owens: Yeah, there’s been a lot of changes. The forester rules are a lot stricter, you know. We used to skid right down those big deep draws some places they make in the road. We’d go right down the middle of a big draw, you know, and it cleaned it out and the water runs real good in there and everything; but you can’t nowadays because there’s a blue line class one and class two, class three and this draw over here, if there’s even bugs or insects along in that draw, well you can’t log in there either, ‘cause if it rains it washes this down with those other draws where the fish can get ‘em. The rules are a lot stricter and a lot smaller timber. More expensive now, you know, to get the lumber. The timber’s a lot smaller and all those rules and everything, loggin’s pretty hard right now today. Lulu: Uh, huh. Mr. Owens: And there’s probably a lot of difference in the price. Probably more money now than it was in the ’50s and ’60s. I never did really know the price of lumber too well, per thousands that they’d get, you know. Lulu: Uh, huh. Tom: Could you describe what working in a sawmill was like? Mr. Owens: I worked in a sawmill, it was called Greenwood Lumber Company, over in Elk. That’s about the only sawmill I ever——well, I worked in a sawmill at Philo, there’s an I & E Lathe Mill there, but there was another sawmill back behind there. Mack Young Stud Mill, I worked there for a while pullin’ green chain. And it’s real fast work———pulled boards, mostly 2x4s. There’s different marks like an ‘x’ on this one, maybe just a check mark like that. And you know where they go——different racks. And you got to——they’re not real heavy, but you got to be a real fast pullin’ ‘em. It took me a while to get onto that. And I pulled green chain over at Elk Lumber Company——Greenwood Lumber Company in Elk. They called it a dead chain. There wasn’t no rollers, you know, to roll the lumber off——like you get it started and it come right on off. All the chains, they were dead chains and it was really hard, big heavy boards. That’s been quite awhile ago, ‘bout ’56 and ’57. Maria: How did you become a musician? Mr. Owens: Well, I got three sisters that played and one brother that played. I have a brother in Tulsa, but I’ve never even seen him. We’ve haven’t spent a lot of time together since all of us got grown. I think he played a harmonica. So my dad played the harmonica, my mother played an organ in church. One brother that played music, and three sisters that played music; when they’d leave to go somewhere, I would pick up the guitar, boy, I really thought I was going. I would really thump on that thing. I just finally picked it up. I would tell my brother, ‘Show me a few chords, Loyd.’ ‘Aw, you’ll pick ‘em up. You’ll get ‘em.’ So I just kept goin’, you know, and watch him, hearing my sister and them play. I picked it up from there. Lulu: Do you still play? Do you keep it up still? Mr. Owens: Yeah, I don’t play as much as I did. I used to play somewhere every weekend. For someone’s party, or anniversary, wedding and some friends in Ukiah, I’d go over there and play some. We had more bars here in Boonville and the one at Philo. I used to play music there for quite awhile. I still play some, but mostly around the house and just for friends. Lulu: Could you play for us? Mr. Owens: Sure. (Strums). Can you hear it? (Strums). What kinda song would you wanna hear? Lulu: Um… Mr. Owens: A hobo, a song about a hobo or somethin’? Trains——? Lulu: Sure. Mr. Mendosa: Get the train sound in there…. Mr. Owens: I got to find the right gear here. A little bit of Hobo Bill, huh? (Makes the train sound (laughter) and sings: Riding on an eastbound freight train speeding through the night, Hobo Bill, the railroad bum, was fighting for his life, And the sadness of his eyes revealed the tortures of his soul. He raised a weak and weary hand to brush away the cold, (Yodels) Hobo Bill (yodels) (Yodels) Hobo Bill No mother’s arms to hold him, no blankets there to fold, Nothing but the howling wind and the driving rain so cold, And you heard the whistle blowing in a dreamy kind of way; The hobo seemed contented for he smiled there where he lay. (Yodels) Hobo Bill (yodels) (Yodels) Hobo Bill (imitates train whistle) Outside the rain was falling upon the lonely boxcar door, The little Hobo Bill lay still upon the floor, As the train sped through the darkness, And the raging storms outside, No one knew that Hobo Bill was taking his last ride. (Yodels) Hobo Bill (yodels) (Yodels) Hobo Bill (train sounds) (Everyone claps and laughs).
That’s Hobo Bill! Maria: That’s cute! Derek: Did you make that song yourself or? Mr. Owens: No, it’s an old Jimmy Rogers song. They used to call him the Mississippi Blue Yodeler, or the Singing Brakeman, he’s supposed to be an engineer. He made a lot of songs about trains. Mitch: That was good! Derek: So you play your guitar in the variety show, right? Mr. Owens: Yeah, for the last year I tried to do some pantomiming; I didn’t do a great job; it was supposed to have been Red Skelton. I rather just play. Mike: You say you taught yourself how to play by watching like your brother and stuff? Mr. Owens: Yeah. Mike: That’s real good. Lulu: I know, good teaching yourself. (Laughs). Mike: Can I ask you what date you were born? Mr. Owens: Oh, 30 th of October, 1929. Lulu: So, yesterday. Mike: Yesterday. Lulu: Happy birthday!
Mr. Owens: Thank you! Maria: Happy birthday. (Laughs). Mr. Owens: We have the same birthday, huh? Mr. Mendosa: Yeah, we do. Can you guess who’s older? (All laugh). Mr. Owens: My little niece–my wife and my niece came in last night and sung me happy birthday and they said, ‘You look like a monkey, you smell like one too.’ (Laughs, sings this to "Happy Birthday" melody). Maria: Can you just, like, describe some things that you have done in the variety show? Mr. Owens: Well, I just did a few country-western songs. Lot of people wants me to yodel. They asked me how I learned the yodel. I said, ‘Well, I used to take my mother’s–you know they call it a rain barrel, sits under the eave of the house, and when it rains it fills up, you know, I’d take my mother’s turkeys and take them by the feet and stick them in the rain barrel and put them up–they went, gobble, gobble, gobble. That’s how I learned to yodel from doing that. (Laughs). So, I’ve played country and western and——you guys know Rainbow? Everyone: Uh, huh. Mr. Owens: Well, Rainbow and Denver Tuttle and I did–two years ago——we did three numbers together. It worked out pretty good. Then I did some with the Eightballs, Emil Rossi and his son, and Dick Sands, we did a couple numbers together, but most time I just kind of solo. That keeps me from messing everybody up. Mr. Mendosa: What are you going to do this year? Mr. Owens: I haven’t really decided it. I’ve got a couple of numbers that I was kinda thinking about. They’re kind of funny. One of them is about a drunk cowboy who was a champion rider, champion bulldogger, bronc rider and bull rider and roper, an all-around cowboy, a young cowboy, and he got drunk and wanted to ride in an airplane. It was his first airplane ride. Mr. Mendosa: Do you know it yet? Can you play it for us? Mr. Owens: Yeah, uh, huh. (Strums guitar), I’ll try it. I haven’t done it in awhile. So just imagine the young cowboy. He’d ridden everything, the bulls, the broncs. Then he got ahold of that bottle of whiskey and got up in that airplane. Gotta find the right chord. Mr. Mendosa: Take your time. No hurry. Well, one day, I figured I’d have some fun; See how ridin’ that airplane was done. I dress me up in my Stetson hat, My high-heeled boots and my bat-winged chaps, I goes out and rounds me up a quart, Headin’ on down for that big airport. I gets in the bird and up we go, She sneaks around like a young bronco (yodels). We’re up about ten thousand high, The air feels good and so do I, I reaches out and pulls back the stick Does the cayoose know any tricks? She lets out a moan and she heads for the ground, I watch my head go twirlin’ around. I bragged I could ride any cayoose’s hide; This is one cayoose that Bill can’t ride. (Laughs, yodels). Well, she let’s out a moan and she goes into a spin, I watched my head go twirlin’ again, I makes a grab for the saddle horn, Why in the heck was I ever born? (yodels). She lets out a moan and she does a triple flip; This ain’t no advice, but a darn good tip, If you know a young cowboy who wants to save his pride, Don’t ever take him for an airplane ride. (Everybody laughs and claps). Mr. Owens: Whoosh! I thought I was going to run outta air! (Everyone laughs). I almost needed an air compressor! Mike: I understand you tell——you’re a pretty good joke teller. Could you tell us a joke that is appropriate to print? (Laughter). Mr. Owens: I’ve been known to tell two or three. They don’t have to be true, do they? Everyone: No. Mr. Owens: I always told these guys, I said, I went to work for this Mr. Johnson down in Texas; I was about seventeen years old, and he had a big cattle ranch. I said, ‘Mr. Johnson, how big is your ranch?’ ‘Well, Bill, I’ll tell you how big my ranch is. I can get up at two o’clock this morning and start driving, and at two o’clock tomorrow morning I’m still not at the other side of my property.’ I scratched my head and said, ‘Yeah, I know. My dad had an old pick-up just like that.’ I went to work for this——well, the same guy. He said, ‘Bill, this is Joe, my foreman; he’s been with me for thirty-five years. I am going to be gone for a couple of weeks, so you are Joe’s helper.’ I said, ‘No problem.’ So Mr. Johnson left. And Joe and I got in his pick-up and rode out across the pasture, a couple of hours. We came to a gate (I was supposed to be his helper); he said, ‘Get out and open that gate.’ I said, ‘Say what?’ He said, ‘Get out and open that gate.’ I said, ‘You get out and open that gate.’ He said, ‘Didn’t you hear Mr. Johnson say that you was my helper?’ I said, ‘That’s right, you get out and try to open it, and if you can’t, I’ll get out and help ya.’ (Everyone laughs). I don’t know what was a matter with that guy; he wanted me to do all that work. I told these guys I had an old Model A Ford back in Oklahoma and had 250,000 miles on it, 125 riding, and 125 walking and pushin’. (All laugh). You had to crank ‘em, didn’t have a starter. Well, they had starters, but sometimes they burnt out. And you crank, better than go buying a starter. I told ‘em I had cranked that thing so much, by the time I had it started, I hadda change the oil. (Everyone laughs). This is just kinda one I made up. I was coming out of Santa Rosa, 19——, it was 1957, I had this brand new 1957 Ford Victoria——canary yellow, white vinyl top, white sidewalls, wire spokes; man, it was——nice brand new car. Coming out of Santa Rosa driving along like I had good sense, you know. Looked back and a highway patrolman had his light turned on. Swoosh, man, it runned about 120 plus, stick shift, so I just popped it in second gear and pedal to the metal. I was passing cars on the right and on the left doing about 120 plus. Looked like I was towing him——he was right behind me, you know. After about seven or eight miles I pulled over and stopped. And he was kinda unhappy. And he said, ‘Bill’ or he said,——he didn’t say ‘Bill,’——‘I wanna know what your problem is, boy. Here you’re driving 120 plus, passing cars on both sides of the road, right and left. Risking my life, your life, everybody’s life on the highway. I was going to tell you that little light by your license plate was flashing off and on. It’s a brand new car, probably just a loose bulb. What in the world is your problem, boy?’ I said, ‘I am sorry about that, officer. About three months ago my wife ran off with a highway patrolman——I thought you was bringing her back! (Everyone laughs). I was getting outta Dodge. I better not let my wife hear that. My wife and I are going to be self-employed next year, we’re going to be self-employed. We’re going into the iron and steel business. She is going to take in ironing, and I am going to start stealing. (Laughter). Lulu: Well, speaking of your wife, how did you meet her? Mr. Owens: Well, I had been married before and was divorced for a couple of years. And I didn’t get a divorce as soon as I got married——as soon as we were separated——I didn’t get a divorce for a year even. And then I got through my divorce. Met my wife, Wanda; she works up there at Anderson Valley Market. She’s pretty handy with that knife——she works back there in the meat market back there. So she’s the boss in the family. So she was working at Jack’s Valley Store, and I got acquainted with her. And the first date we went out on, well, we went to Cloverdale for dinner. So I had just run home and changed. I was working in the woods, and I was real dirty. Run home and changed, and we got over to the Owl Café in Cloverdale. I had left my wallet in——we ordered this big dinner and everything, you know. And I left my wallet in my clothes when I changed. So she had to pay for that. She never did forget it. ‘Take me out to dinner, have to pay for it.’ I knew her brother and dad before I started dating her. Maria: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Owens, for talking with us today. Mr. Owens: Well, it’s a pleasure. I am glad to been able to do this for you. Lulu: Thank you. Mr. Owens: There’s bound to be somethin’ in here that you’ll like, huh? Everyone: Yeah. Thank you. Mr. Owens: You’re welcome. |
