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and their children. They bought a nice home near that of Butch's	I
parents, who were getting old. Butch went to work for the	[
Mississippi Power Company as an engineer in the Gulfport plant.	|
He and Alice were very happy in Mississippi City. But tragedy	-
struck a year or two later - Butch had a bad fall at the plant,	|
aggravated an old back injury, and passed away. I was away at	;
the time and did not learn of his death for months. Alice sold their	j
house and moved to her native city, New Orleans. She went back	[
to her teaching profession and reared a fine family.
I left Frisco when I was offered a job weighing and inspecting j celery for the Transcontinental Freight Bureau, moving to Terminus, in the San Joaquin Valley. Terminus was a little town at the end of the Western Pacific line. The railroad provided a caboose which served as living quarters for four inspectors. For a	?
while Bing Wong prepared our meals, and served us in his grocery	?
store. Then old Mac's wife left him. Mac was the freight agent	J
there. He invited us to eat in his home if we did the cooking. We	}
accepted, then flipped a coin to see who cooked the first meal. I	j
lost - then made the mistake of cooking veal rounds in a creole	I
gravy, which I served with a tossed salad and rice. My mother had	I
taught me the art of cooking, so I wound up cooking until both the	?
i
celery shipping season and the green asparagus shipping season	i
were over. After the asparagus season was over, I was offered a	?L
transfer to southern California to weigh and inspect oranges but	|
accepted instead a foreman's job on a nearby celery farm with the	?
Robert T. Cochran Company of New York and San Francisco. My	t
living quarters was an elaborate houseboat. After hiring a Japan-	1
ese crew, I began preparing a seed bed large enough to provide	j
plants for two hundred acres of celery. I found the Japanese to be	*
morally and physically clean - good workers but inclined to loaf a little when not watched. Fugi Kawa was my best man and served me well as irrigation boss and advisor.	;
One day I rigged up a hand-line, baiting the	hook	with	fresh	[
shrimp rolled up in a piece of cheesecloth, and threw	it	overboard	^
off the stern of the houseboat and left for a tour of the fields. I must have been gone for an hour. When I returned, I had a thirty-pound striped bass! He had put up a fight and got entangled in the line.	;
When I pulled him in he was barely alive. I carried the fish up to	j
28	'
the kitchen and asked the cook, ? hired, if she would prepare it. The filet and the Japs had boiled fish soybean sauce.
Frankly, I had never been prow had always been a conscientious an excellecnt job at anything I weaknesses to overcome my Probably, the very reason I was h Cochran's field man, was because Bensberg during the green-aspai signed most of the growers to a when the market price went up I higher price and jumping their c< call upon them during the next v honor their contracts. It was a motor-launch and invited a yoi accompany my girl friend and islands.
We left early one Saturday mor the growers, make friends, and . their contract with Robert T. Coc went the ritual was the same. M and would issue a gracious greet wine cellar and sample their d< visited the fifth and last grower v\ glow when familiarity takes o> improve when we departed fp presented us with one gallon ol green-asparagus began floodir Bensberg was overjoyed but managed to turn the tide in Cochr he made me a foreman of the cel knew I had little agricultural e completed when I was forced to I two brothers and my old pal Mi City for California with the inte them. I arranged to have my