Tim: Do you remember a lot of national emergencies? Like the depression? Do you actually remember the depression?  

Mom: We were in it as farmers, but my father... Bought a new Dodge car. And we went to the Chicago World's Fair in 1934.  

Tim: So life went on.  

Mom: Life went on. But I also can remember, and we could make our own clothes, but I had a dress that had a hole in the elbow that I had to wear to school because I didn't have another one.

That's how poor we were.  

Tim: Didn't your mom, I thought your mom was like a seamstress or something.  

Mom: So was I. Mildred and I both had 4 H.  

Tim: You should have put a patch on your elbow.  

Mom: Probably didn't have any more cloth.  

Tim: That, that was poor. Because we made our own clothes. Geez.  

Mom: And, we didn't always have that stuff.

Tim: You know, this is, this has caught the attention of the country, obviously. I'm just wondering how many of those type of things you've been through in your life.  

Mom: Well, that was in the 30s.  

Tim: Yeah. And then... You remember Pearl Harbor? Certainly. You were 17 years old. Yes. No, 18.  

Mom: I know. But it was a sad day.

I'll say. It was sad. I remember the June, the Armistice Day. June, the first one.  

Tim: V E Day. Victory  

Mom: in Europe. V E Day. We got on the streets. We lived on Cleveland Street, then the apartment, and everybody was out on the street.  

Tim: You had a seven month old baby.  

Mom: Hollering, yippee, or something.  

Tim: That had to be what a day.

Yes. The war wasn't quite over, you still had Japan. But we, we were... The atom bomb hasn't been dropped yet. Oh no, it hasn't.  

Mom: With the European theater.  

Tim: Yeah, well. But, uh, uh.  

Mom: But, but you, uh, you and Dick would be coming home?  

Tim: No. Uncle Dick and Uncle Pat. Uncle Pat. Was Uncle Pat overseas at the time of the end of the war?

Yes. Was he? In Germany?  

Mom: In office work or whatever.  

Tim: Yeah. I wonder if they were around for the Battle of the Bulge.  

Mom: I couldn't tell you. Uncle Dick was a cook.  

Tim: Yeah, I knew that. Wasn't he like on Eisenhower's train or something? I think so. He should have come home and waited around and cooked in the White House for eight years.

Of course, he was cooking Army food. Eisenhower might not have wanted him for state dinners.  

Mom: Yeah. Your face has cleared up nicely, Tim.  

Tim: I can shave, you know. When I had the stitches out the other day, I said to the woman, the nurse who took them out, I said, when will I be able to shave? She said, you can shave today.

Ten stitches. So I did, I gotta watch it though. It'll still be a scar, not much though. Probably. Yeah.  

Mom: And that'll take time to go away. Mm hmm. It'll go away.  

Tim: No, well, I'm wondering how this stacks up as a cataclysmic event. It's not affecting us. This virus.  

Mom: Well... It will, I think. You think it'll get worse?

Well, like grocery stores and places like that. It does affect.  

Tim: Yeah. A woman at the grocery store today, I was buying a New York Times. She told me, um, She said, Everybody's buying toilet paper. You're not buying any toilet paper? I said, No. She said, I went on Amazon to buy some and they were out. I said, Amazon is out of toilet paper?

She said they had some kind of toilet paper. The only kind available didn't have a hole in it. I said, what kind of toilet paper is that? So So in almost a hundred years, you remember the Depression, Pearl Harbor. It's interesting.  

Mom: Yeah, but I had a lot of other things on my mind, like getting married, having kids.  

Tim: Life always goes on, doesn't it?  

Mom: Yes, and you'd be sick. Doctors, I told you this. You told me the other day, yeah.

Came over. Hmm.  

Tim: But you never, you didn't let events outside the home control your feelings or anything?

Now, at the time of Pearl we might have Japanese in the streets? We might have Germans coming off to cross the Atlantic?  

Mom: I don't think those thoughts, no. Really? Okay.  

Tim: We're winners. Yeah, well, that's one of the things about America, being sort of an island. To invade America isn't that easy. Wouldn't happen.

Yeah, it's one of the things that made our country grow, I think.

Do you remember the internment of the Japanese? Was that a news story at the time in the 40s? Oh, yes. That's a blot on our country.  

Mom: Uh, I'm trying to think of how I knew so much of it. Because of family being in L. A., I guess. All goes to that sort of thing.  

Tim: Rachel was out there, wasn't she? Well, not until after the war.

Oh, she didn't go out until after the war?  

Mom: After Bob got home in 45. Oh, okay. 44, 45. Patty was born out there. Yeah. And she was older than Brian.  

Tim: Well, she was born earlier than 44 then, so... 43. The Japanese were still interned back then. I don't know when they first put them in, probably 41 or 2, right after Pearl Harbor.

Mom: And Rachel was probably there, so they used the Army facility for her to have a baby.  

Tim: What about, do you remember when the atomic bombs were dropped? Was that where they were like, front page stories, like Hiroshima? Oh yeah. Really? Do you know more people died in the... Firebombing of Japanese cities than in the two atom bombs.

There was like 80 Japanese cities that got, were getting bombed. Burnt to the ground, yeah. Burnt them to the ground, yeah. Way more people died in those, uh, bomb attacks than in the two atomic bomb attacks. But, they all, they all came before the atomic bombs.  

Mom: But they were bombing our soldiers like crazy, weren't they call the Japanese pilots?

Tim: Kamikaze. Yeah. They were hitting our, uh, warships. Oh, okay. That's what they did. They could take down an aircraft carrier, five or six kamikazes, I guess. But they wouldn't surrender. Their cities were being burned. 70, 80, 90 cities. Finally... Truman said, okay, drop the bomb, and then they, that's finally, they had to quit.

Yeah. I don't know how many died, I bet 25, 20 million, 15 million people, I don't know, a lot. Yeah. There probably would have never been that many civilians killed in a war. Probably not.  

Mom: But it had to stop sometime.  

Tim: Yeah, for sure. I guess, I guess people are interested though in what, I think that what you're telling me is life goes on and you live through things.

Mom: It's like now. I'm not affected by this virus.  

Tim: Were you listening just now when they say older people are more...  

Mom: So what? If you get it, you get it. I'm sorry.  

Tim: Well, the likelihood of you getting it is almost nil.  

Mom: The likelihood of you getting it is not nil. No, I'm not. And I'm more worried about that.  

Tim: Yeah, I'm in that same demographic.

Yes. Over 70. So, but I don't have any, uh... Well,  

Mom: Kevin says he's a good one for it, because he has lung problems. He has lung problems? He coughs all the time.  

Tim: Kevin? Yes. I haven't heard him cough much. I didn't know that. Huh. He, uh, you know he has back issues. I didn't know he had lung problems. Well, that's the point.

Your age plus some underlying condition, like Margie. Everybody, Megan, Keenan, Ryan, they're saying, Mom, stay home, stay home. Thinking, if she's in the wrong place, she's a likely candidate to... Get something , but. She doesn't stay at home? No. She works today. She goes to those jazz meetings and chamber meetings.

She had a... She's in this cookbook book club. They had a big dinner last night.

This is bad tape on this show. It keeps cutting off.

Mom: Well, they're traveling around to different...  

Tim: That's what he does, this guy, yeah. He had a place in Times Square, you know, but it closed it up.

Mom: Well, the only one that's out a cooking show early in the morning, that kitchen. That's  

Tim: Margaret William's husband. Jeff Tekarian. Yes. You watch it. He's on a lot.  

Mom: Yeah, because he. Doesn't have any money, I guess. I don't know. Well,  

Tim: he's, he's, he's, he's had, he's got Fran Williams behind him for one thing, but he's got, you know, he's, he's one of the guys that actually won that Top Chef, the real serious chef show.

That's, that started it. He can quote French names of, can he, Margie said he, he has a website where he sells, like, vitamin supplements and workout gear and he's got his kids on there and Margaret's on selling something so He's a businessman He's had some lawsuits in New York. He didn't pay he kind of grabbed the tips from his wait staff four or five years ago.

They sued him. He settled We went to his restaurant in, uh, Connecticut when we were visiting Megan once. No, I guess we were on our way to, uh, visit Dennis and MJ after we were visiting, uh, Ryan. And we went through Greenwich, Connecticut. He had a place there called The National. We had a cup of coffee. Now it's closed.

Ah! He makes all his money on TV.  

Mom: Oh! Maybe that's why he's on so much.