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But then she met this woman, Mildred Bayard. Millie must have been about fourteen then. This woman wanted Millie to go with her to one of the Harvey Houses out in the desert-I think it was Barstow-as a waitress. I don't know what kind of experience she had out there, but she run away from there, too, and she went down to [San] 'Pedro to be a waitress.
    She was looking for the employment office, and she stopped Daddy on the street to ask him where it was, and he said he'd take her there. He did, but the next day he got her a job with somebody he knew that run a restaurant because he was very well known in 'Pedro. So, let's see. The first day she met Daddy. The second he got her a job. And then he asked her how old she was. When she told him she was fifteen, she said he got as white as a sheet. The next day they went up to Los Angeles and got married at some Bible college. She gave her name as Mildred Bayard on the marriage license. And then he brought her home to Grandma.
    Daddy thought that if Millie could stay with Grandma while he was sailing-at that time he was sailing between 'Pedro and Seattle on a lumber boat ... But she didn't get along very good. She was a nice, friendly girl, you know; Italians usually are. And the family wasn't very nice to her, the Noble family. They were very clannish, and they didn't seem to take to her too good. She didn't know what to do with her time, and I think she did things she shouldn't have. Anyhow, after a couple of trips, Daddy decided that that wouldn't do. He'd have to come stateside. That's when he went to work in a machine shop. I was living in Watts then, and I kinda lost track of 'em until Junior was born.
    Oh, my! Poor little thing! He had rickets and yellow jaundice when he was born, and he was so skinny that his hands and his feet looked like bird claws. When he was three or four months old! Couldn't get nothing to agree with him. I don't know if she couldn't or if she didn't want to, but junior was a bottle baby. I don't imagine she had any milk anyway. She didn't eat right. Junior couldn't assimilate cow's milk. They had him to half a dozen different doctors, and they all told 'em the same thing: "He can't live." They took him to Children's Hospital in L.A., and the doctors gave them a formula for barley gruel. It had to be cooked all day, and in that she put Karo syrup and so much dextro-maltose, and that agreed with him. But he was still awfully skinny and they couldn't bathe him in water-he was too weak. The doctor told them that if they bathed him in olive oil, that would nourish him, too. He looked like death warmed over.
    Daddy and Millie had lots of fights about junior not being Daddy's. He was sailing when she got pregnant, and junior would have either had to be two weeks early or two to three weeks late. And so this Betty Ward, a friend of Millie's, smartaleck woman that she was, she was there when junior was born, and she said to the doctor, "Is he a full-term baby?" The doctor said, "Yes, he came right on time." So there was that question. But in time, Daddy realized that junior had to be his. There were too many features the same. You know them turned up toes that junior has? And Daddy's arms are shaped, were shaped, here just exactly like Junior's.
    But Millie was unfaithful. Might as well say it. I remember when me and Shorty lived in the big house, and she and Daddy lived in the back. Daddy worked swing shift, and she'd go out, and she asked me to listen for junior in case he woke up. She got home one night just by the skin of her teeth, just soon enough to get her clothes off and jump in bed before Daddy got home. Scared her to death.
    This Betty Ward had several children and they were all mean as could be to junior. They were all older than he, and they would tease him just to hear him holler 'cause he'd make a real big commotion when he was upset about anything. They're the ones that got him afraid of food touching on a plate. Millie and Betty would go