 My name is George Thomas. I was born in Grand Rapids, Ohio. How'd you get here, George? My father wanted to move out west, so we moved here in 55. What was it? Well, he was a precision machinist in Ohio, and when he moved here he worked for timber products. And how did he break his back? Did he say he broke his back? Yeah, I had the timber products. The old man would not go on welfare, so we just, we didn't have any money, so we just stayed in the gazebo there until we could find some other shelter. And we ended up running the house off the eaks and live across the river here. And then we moved to a turkey ranch out in Rouge, Hart's turkey ranch. And now it's just an old tar paper shack, outhouse and all that. And then we moved out to Williams. All my brothers and sisters went to Williams School. We lived in the house part of Varner's store. And then we moved into a log cabin up Tether Row Road. It was a log shed. My mom hung sheets and made rooms, and we were quite poor. The old man wouldn't go on welfare, so we just scrounged around. We got by Dolores Thomas, and my dad's name was Chuck Thomas. No, my mom worked harder than any woman ever born. She, the old man never worked after that. And she worked, well, they worked at the turkey ranch for a little bit, but we, she ended up getting a job in Grants Pass, and in 63 we moved into Grants Pass. I never heard my parents argue. That was one thing. They had no time for that. And we washed in little enameled pans with water heated on the old stove and the outhouse. And just, that's the way a lot of people lived back then, I guess. You were the youngest, right? Yeah, the youngest of six. So did the older? No. No, we just played. What was it like to live here? Just mom. Did you find the summer that you lived here? Well, I was born, you know, I was, I was too young to remember any of this, but we, like I say, we moved, I remember living on the turkey ranch, and those were good times. We lived there five years, and then we moved to Williams. But we enjoyed living out here in the sticks. Just good old-fashioned country living, you know. I live in Drone Prairie outside of Grants Pass about five miles. Got a little farm out there, and I have three children, and I don't know. What stories do you tell them about growing up? Oh, they're sick of hearing them by now. Well, if you, you know, if you didn't live it, it's hard to understand it even. It's hard to understand how. The only person I ever heard of that was poorer than we were is a kid at Drone Prairie School back in the 30s or 40s. He was eating his lunch out of his little bag, and he had his face buried in there, and finally one day the teacher grabbed that bag and looked in there was potato skins. He said his dad had to eat the potatoes to keep strong working, and the kids lived on the skins. I can relate to that kid. We only had like one pair of shoes, you know, for school, and even those flopped when you walked, you know. But we had to take the shoes off the minute we got home, and I have pictures of us building snow forts barefooted, and we picked black braids and sold them barefooted, you know. But look what a success I'd become. Yeah. So was this a park when you lived here? It looks exactly the same. It looks, you know, it didn't have a gravel road, I don't think, but it just, that gazebo looks just like it did. I don't think it's aged at all since we lived here. God, it was 60 years ago, and we used to drive across the bridge, and my brother lived up on Palmer Creek for a while, about 10 years, and now he lives in Jacksonville, my oldest brother. He's the one that's got, that's the wealth of information. He has a photographic memory, and I have a very sparse memory. So did people come to picnic here when you lived here? Yeah, they came to swim, and yeah, music is evil. Yeah, it was a different, it was a different people than today. It was a salt of the earth, you know. It really was. The mindset is to maybe reinvent the past or twist it maybe a little bit to what they would like or their agenda. We weren't trying to impress anybody or we were just trying to, we were just getting by and living life, but it's so much more disingenuous, I think than it used to be. I don't remember anybody handing me a penny, even though we were so poor. I always give poor kids money and stuff. There's not poor people anymore. There's people, what they call poor people, but there's not poor people like we were poor. People have big food stamp cards and all these, you know, everything's paid for. People want to know what poor is. There's not poor people like there used to be. Yeah, I always certainly would have, we lived on, he finally accepted that surplus food the government gave out and so we lived on cornmeal mush, you know. Yeah, I would like to have honeycombs or something like that, it was just, you know, we were allowed a half a glass of milk for dinner and I don't know why, I think every single day we'd ask how much milk we could have because once in a rare occasion you'd say one full glass, you know, that was a big deal and we were all skinny as a rail and I made up for it, you know, last time. But anyway, no, if you look at my bones, it didn't hurt me much. We never had any shots to get to school or I've never had a tetanus shot in my life, never had a shot of any kind. We were never sick. We should have stitches many times but we never went to a doctor, never went to a dentist, never owned a toothbrush, never had a vitamin. But... So George, how old are you now? I'm 60. So you're a success. Mmm, I've survived. Well, I worked hard. I worked hard. I was a union iron worker and a sawmill worker and I packed rebar in the bay area, you know, that's hard work, being a rod buster. But I worked hard and all my brothers and sisters were hard workers. We lost one brother about two years ago, the one we thought would live the longest and he's probably blessed not to be here anymore anyway. Are you close with your family? Oh, you know, probably as much as... Yeah, they pretty much all live around here still. Probably as well as most families, I suppose. Everyone has their little idiosyncrasies but... Oh, no. No, we don't do that. Well, Thanksgiving once in a while, we get together but it's usually one that doesn't show up or something. No, once the folks die, it kind of takes the heart out of it, you know what I mean, a little bit and everyone goes off and does their own little thing. Where did you work at the sawmill? Out in Kirby, it was called K-Bax Mill. I worked out there for like five years and then when the lumber industry collapsed, I went to the Monterey Peninsula to be an iron worker. That must have been a shock. It was. Well, the first place I moved was San Jose and I could not believe that people would live like that sitting two hours of traffic in the morning on the way home just to go a couple miles down the road. So I moved out of there and moved to Monterey which is a lot less populated, yeah, congested. You're not going to put this on TV, are you? No. I hate your guts right now. Anyway, we're done? All right.