There was another occasion in ’29 or ’30 where Moses had to leave the country because of his union activities, and he went to the Philippine Islands and ran a bar in Manila. When he came back, which was after the big depression had already set in and settled across the country, he came back with quite a little bit of money, and he was back commercial fishing again. He made several trips down to South America. I recall he brought back tuna fish, and being as the whole family was there—Grandma and Irma and Dick Pepper and us kids—well, he salted up some tuna in a big barrel and he put too much salt in it and it burnt the tuna up to where we couldn’t eat it. But he tried. He wanted to do it on his own. And he was always out to help anyone. That was one of his big things. Even if he didn’t like you, he’d try to help you. Later in life . . . That probably explains how he was with Moham. My wife could never understand it. We’d go over to their house and here was his wife and his ex-wife sitting knitting on the same couch. The whole family stayed together all these years. That was very important to Moses.
(Millie) Remember that time Moses wanted to buy some property? He was going to have him and Mommy [Thelma] live on the middle of that property. On one corner was going to be Junior and Patti; another corner, Bud [John’s brother] and his wife, Aud; us in this corner. He was going to be . . .
(John) He was going to be the patriarch. He wanted to keep us together so we could always be in contact with one another, but there’s one thing Moses didn’t visualize, I don’t believe, and that was such a fast-moving civilization coming up, going faster than he could think.
Grandma Noble was a very, very—hahahaha!—stubborn and hardheaded woman, but you had to love her. Art lived with her, you see, and was under her domination more or less. Grandma had set ideas, same as Moses did, and when she told Art Junior, “I don’t want you smoking! I don’t want you doing this!” well, she expected to be obeyed, and Art, of course, didn’t obey very easily. She was the same way with me, but I loved her very much because she did so much in trying to help me, although I didn’t agree with the way she went about it. She tried to make me be industrious, clean living. She was a very good woman. Her ideas about young people probably coincided with mine in this modern day and age.
Grandma and Moses fought hammer and tongs verbally, being both as stubborn and hardheaded as they were. They couldn’t come to a meeting of the minds. Grandma didn’t like the way Moses was living with some of the women he went around with. Moses was her son and she thought she had some control over him. Moses wouldn’t conform at all. He paid her bills, made sure everything was there, furniture, food, but he didn’t want her telling him what to do, the same way he wanted to tell other people what to do. It was a conflict constantly, always a friction.
Moses always admired my mom when she was a young woman. He was in love with her for many years before they finally got married. My dad treated my mom very shabbily. And Moses didn’t believe that a man should treat a woman shabbily. He could knock her down and kick her—that’s fine—but he had to feed her and give her the necessities of life. With Shorty, he’d go down and work, longshoring, and leave Momma with no money. He’d spend it all in the bars. He wasn’t like Moses. He wouldn’t take care of the family first and then go drink it up. He’d spend all the money down there and come home broke. We didn’t have food in the house.
Dad left in 1939, ’40, and Mom and Moses got together. He was always quite attracted to her, and he, in her eyes, was a good provider even though he drank and horsed around. He’d been divorced from Moham, oh years and years. In 1942, when I entered the navy, Mom told me he was staying at some hotel in San Francisco, so I went to see him before I shipped out. I woke him up in his hotel room; his gang was workin’ up there. We spent one evening and all night together, and he told me, just before I left, he says, “Well, John, I’m gonna go back and marry your mom.” And I says, “Well, that’s okay with me, Moses. I hope you have a lot of fun.”
They started living together, and by the time I came back from the service, Momma could legally get married again. By that time, Moses was in his fifties, and he always treated my mom like a queen because he saw what my dad had done to her and to me, beat me up, threw me out. Moses loved kids, and the old man would beat the poop out of my brother Bud and I. Moses couldn’t stand to see children mistreated, beat, and without food. And he brought us food, gosh yes! Moses’d come to the house and bring us food and sometimes clothing because my old man would feed us· all canned tomatoes and then he’d tell my mom, “Cook me up a steak.”
When we were in grammar school, Bud and I used to go over to where Art lived with Grandma and build little wooden stick airplanes and play on the floor or outside. We flew kites together. Now, everybody called him Junior, and he didn’t like it, and I didn’t blame him. I always called him Art. And when the other kids wanted to fight or beat him up, he was always protective of his mouth because even when he was a small kid he was playing the horn. Mr. Parry, his teacher, was always warning him about hurting his mouth; he said that was his livelihood to come. So I’d get into arguments with Art, but I never fought with him like Billy Pepper did, and Bud. I’d intercede on the few occasions I was around when it happened, and Art always respected me for that. I think that was more or less the bond between us.
I used to go over, to go swimming or something with Art, and I’d have to wait while he finished his lessons. Art was excited about his music to the extent that when I came over he’d show me a music lesson or passage that Mr. Parry had left him and he’d say, “How does this sound, John?” He’d play it for me. I didn’t know one note from another, but I listened and I could see just how enthusiastic he was. The last time I saw Mr. Parry and Art practicing in the living room there, Mr. Parry said, “Art, you keep this up and your name will be in lights all over this whole country.” Of course, Art was a little puffed up about that.
We used to talk. I had my mom, who showed a lot of love and protection for us kids; whereas Art, his mother was not there and he had to depend on Grandma and her strictness and Moses and his very vocal—he was very forceful in the way he spoke, especially when he was a young man. Art used to love to get away; we spent a lot of time together just because of that. And he’d often say, “I wish I could just get away from Grandma, from Moses.” He talked very little about Moham. Very little. Because, you see, she was too young then to be very maternal toward him. She went her way and let Art Junior go his, and he resented that very much. But he liked my mom real well. Momma was always loving toward him and she petted him, which he didn’t have because Grandma Noble wasn’t a loving type of person in that respect except to me. She never expressed any affection or love for Art when he was a little boy.
When we got older, we did a lot of drinkin’, both of us. We’d go to a drugstore; they didn’t demand your identity. We’d buy a pint of Four Roses, take our girls out on a date, and we’d drink it up. Usually, I went back to Grandma’s house with Art and slept in the same bedroom there, and we’d get up in the morning and drink up all Grandma’s milk outta the icebox because we both had hangovers. We’d guzzle it down. And then we’d go to the beach, Cabrillo Beach. We’d mostly finagle some beer to drink down there. We’d swim, sit out on the rocks.
After the war, and just before the war started, Art took me out on some of his jam sessions that he’d go to on Central Avenue. He’d take me to these clubs, and they were mostly black people that he associated with very closely. They were fine musicians, and they accepted him when he’d come in there because he was that good.
One night Art was playing, and they had this dancer, a mulatto girl—we were drinkin’ it up. She came around and danced on these tables, slipped off her garter, threw it up in the air, and I caught it. She said, “You’re the one!” I didn’t know what to do. I was too young. She got down off the table, stretched the garter out, and put it around my neck. She says, “You have to kiss your way out of that.” I was thrilled to pieces, but here were all these people looking on. Especially all these black people. Art was still up there jammin’. I told him