JOSEPHINE
Josephine Kelley was born in San Diego in 1897. By her own account, she has survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, traveled to China, made bootleg gin during Prohibition, driven cross-country alone in a Model A Ford and escorted Thomas Edison and Henry Ford down the aisle at a gala event.
In her cluttered, musty one-room studio apartment, surrounded by photographs and memories, she props herself up on one elbow in a bed covered with sheets and blankets older than she is, complains about the San Diego Padres and politics in general and looks suspiciously at the microphone in front of her.
Josephine is a drama queen. Her speech is punctuated with gestures, dramatic pauses, loud outbursts and a laugh that sounds much like a 1930 Model A Coupe starting up in the morning. Her eyes light up and she sheds 90 years as her tale begins.
And now,.. Josephine.
I think I was a mistake. How I was born, I’ll never know. My sister tells me that she never remembers my mother and father sleeping together. She slept with my mother and my brother slept with my father. Somebody walked at night!
I was an albatross. Forty five my mother was when she had me and, frankly, I don’t think she wanted me because (heh! heh!) she’d go off in the morning as soon as the work was done, up to the library and she’d put me out in the yard with the dog…What was his name…Prince…and he’d watch me (my sister and brother were at school). If I’d get up to walk to the gate the dog would grab me and pull me back. So I had a dog for a babysitter when I was a kid.
Well, I didn’t know until the late sixties (my sister died in ’69) and that year before she died she told me things I never knew. My brother and sister were both sworn to secrecy to tell me my father died after I was born. I didn’t know that he died when I was nineteen. He died in San Diego but they had seen him in between. They’d visited with him. He used to always ask for me and my sister said he carried (my brother brought him a picture of me) and he carried that in his pocket all the time. But he wasn’t crazy about my sister because she was a seven-month baby and she was a little wrinkled-up red ball (he was a great big man) and that didn’t appeal to him- a Frenchman.
But when I bounced out I was, gosh, I was a ten pound baby. He thought he had a French army! And you know, my sister never walked til she was three and she didn’t talk, really. I started walking- nobody helped me. I got up and Mama said I just walked. And I just started talking and the first words I ever said was (well, my brother and sister were at school and there was a neighbor with two kids next door and they weren’t very friendly with my mother because they weren’t religious people.) So they spent the whole day with me and the first words I spoke I came into the house and said to my mother: “Gimme a piece of bread and butter dammit.” My mother said “What!!” “Gimme a piece of bread and butter, dammit.”
So another time my Mama came home, my sister was babysitting. She picked me up and said “My God, what happened?” My sister had taken a pair of scissors and cut off all my eyelashes and picked off all my eyebrows and put my hair in little pigtails all over my head and then cut ‘em all off! I was the funniest looking thing
But then, my father got in a fight with another Frenchman he knew in France. It seems that years ago my father stole a girl from him he’d been crazy about and there’d always been kinda bad feelings between them. So he came out to San Diego and there was one leading (what do you call those houses?) bordellos, yeah. It was run by a lady, Josephine. See, I didn’t know til my sister told me before she died that I wasn’t named after the empress Josephine. I was named after my father’s girlfriend. She was the madam of this house. So he had a fight with my father and it kept up until he told my mother that my father had a girlfriend down there. That’s where he used to go when she was in church. So my father naturally told the priest about it. I always held it against that priest. He told my mother to leave him and that was wrong. She shouldn’t have left him because he was making good money and we had our own house.
So my mother left him. Mama was brought up to be a nun. She was a teacher. She couldn’t boil water and she didn’t know anything about housekeeping. She came from a rich family in Ireland and they had servants. So, that would be between 1884-1885. Why, I guess it must have been in 1886 because I was walking and talking. So Mama was stuck with three kids and there was nothing she could do. There was no place for a woman in the world at that time and Mama was 45 years of age. Fifty was considered old in the late 1800′s. Even before that, even King Henry VIII was considered an old man when he was in his forties! And people in their fifties were considered very old. People didn’t live in those days as old as they do now. Fifty is just over the hill now but back then it was the end!
Well. anyway….Mama walked out on my father with three kids. She found out it wasn’t an easy task. That was a mistake. She shoulda stuck it out, because we were deprived of an education and everything. The only thing she could do, the priest told her, was to put us in an orphan’s home. My sister never forgave her or me because the Sisters refused to take me unless she came along to look after me. So my sister at eleven had to go in this convent and we went to LA to Boyle Heights convent. And Sisters weren’t like they are now. They were kinda mean. At least they were mean to her. I don’t remember. My poor brother was put with the Brothers at Watsonville.
Well, for Mama to go from LA to Watsonville in those days it’d be like goin’ to Europe. ‘Cause three dollars was big money for a week’s wages. That was BIG money! So, that was very sad. While my sister was in the convent they used to come and wake her up at three o’clock in the morning and she had to take five kids including me down to the bathroom, which seemed like a mile down those cold corridors. And how could she know whether they relieved themselves or not? And if one of them wet the bed she was punished for it. And of course the only one that ever wet the bed was me! She got punished for me for all those years…she hated my guts. Hah! She told me and I didn’t blame her when I heard the story. And the result of it was, one of the punishments, she had to wash the sheets and she was deprived of her dessert. Well. the dessert wasn’t a big thing. It might have been a cookie or it might have been a fruit or somethin’, but that, to an orphan, in an orphanage, that’s an awful big thing.
Remember the time Marilyn Monroe said, one Christmas she got an orange. She thought it was the biggest thing in her life. See, people don’t realize, a child in those days, there was no help. The Church didn’t help people. They didn’t help Momma at all. They told her to leave my father but they didn’t offer any help otherwise. There was no Medicare, no pensions, there was no nothing. So we moved to Los Angeles. That’s where the orphanage where my sister and I was.
And my mother ( well, my brother was seventeen when he got out. I say got out, because when I met him I was ten then.) went down to the station. And I’ll never forget it- it haunts me…this old, old man got off the train. Imagine, he was only seventeen. But he was stooped and old. And the whole side of his face was black and blue. The Irish are very superstitious people. My brother was left-handed which means you’re controlled by the devil. And they used to strap his left arm to his body and behind his back. It was strapped all that time. And whether he was stubborn, (he’s got a stubborn streak like I have), I don’t know, but he never learned to use his right hand. When he came out after seven years, he couldn’t write his name. That was terrible- Momma had to start teaching him how to write his name. He couldn’t use his left hand- it was useless now. But he never learned to use his right hand. And that was pathetic.
So Mama apprenticed him out (heh, heh!) it was funny, she apprenticed him out to a bookbinder. And, he always used to take me with him. And he’s drivin’ us, (course, there was no automobiles then) he’s drivin’ this truck with all his books in the back to deliver. When he gets to the place he looks back and there’s nothing in the truck. The gate had come down and he’d lost all the books. So he got fired from that job. So she apprenticed him to a contractor to learn the building business. Well, he lasted a week there because he turned the hose on all the sacks of cement, he didn’t know. That was the end of that job.
So, finally Momma apprenticed him to a, the big thing in those days was plasterers. You know, you never see a mason anymore. Everything was brick, especially down in Los Angeles…adobe houses are the best houses there is because they’re cool in summer and warm in winter and they’re good-they last. We have adobe houses around here over a hundred years old. So she apprenticed him to this contractor to learn to be a carpenter. No, to the plasterer, that was it– they made big money then. The masons and plasterers, everything was plastered, these adobe houses were plastered on the outside and the inside.
He hadn’t been on that job a week when he was looking up, he was doing the ceiling. And the plaster fell in his right eye…. yes, his right eye. I don’t know whether they coulda saved it nowadays or not. You know, he lost the sight ’cause whatever they used in the plaster those days, there was a lot of lye, it just burnt the whole eye. But they didn’t remove the eye. The eye turned to stone. It was stone. But the iris looked clear. But that was the end. They soon found out he only had one eye. It made life very difficult for him, see. So it was odd jobs and things and all so, he decided he wanted to see the world, so Momma said go ahead (he was goin’ on eighteen then). But he got as far as New Orleans.
In those days it was quite the thing to jump freight cars. That’s how all the bums traveled. And, you know, they had a way with them. If they hit a town and they hit a house or farm where they got somthin’ to eat, they used to leave a mark on it. So it was safe to hit that place. But if it was a tough place they’d also leave a mark “Don’t Go Here!” But they always got by. They used to meet under bridges and sorta pool the stuff that they had. He got to New Orleans, anyway. (That’s where my mother and father were married).
And ,(heh, heh!), first crack out of the box he got arrested. He didn’t have any money on him. They’re very strict in New Orleans. That’s how they got their labor there in those days. They used to arrest all the bums and hobos and put ‘em on the chain gang. They put ‘em to work cleaning roads. And he did six months there and that was enough- that was hard work. And the minute he got out of there he shot back to Los Angeles as fast as he could and he never left my mother again.
But, oh my, what a wonderful brother he was! He worked and gave her all his salary…she used to allow him a dollar a week for car fare and his Bull Durham, and the Church got the rest. It didn’t matter whether we ate or not. My mother was very, very religious. That’s the way it is in Ireland. The Church is so poor they take your last dime. My husband told me that. The families are very strict in Ireland that way. It’s a big thing to have either a nun or a priest in the family. That’s the main goal because, after all, in those days, there wasn’t much industry in Ireland.
Like, take my husband. He was born in Wicklow. The only way he could get out of Wicklow was goin’ to sea. That was the only way out. There was no industry there. He went to sea as a cabin boy when he was twelve years of age. His mother had died when he was ten and his father was a seaman so he was all on his own. But he was sick every day of his life. Oooh, when we got married and all, some friends of his wanted us to go fishin’ and he said “Heavens forbid, no! Heavens forbid, I don’t want to see a boat again!”
He was in the War, the First World War. He served in the British Navy. I don’t know how he got into that but he did. The ship he was on, I don’t know what it was, I got all his medals here, was torpedoed in the Atlantic and he saved a Lasker (I think that’s what they called the Indian seamen- Laskers- He held him up for eighteen hours. And after they was rescued he had an awful time. It took him over a year to get rid of this Lasker cause he made himself his servant, you know. He was so grateful he saved his life, and he just followed him all over, see. So he finally got on with the United Fruitboats.
But anyway, to get back to my mother… I think it was right after Christmas, I remember, when Momma was in charge of a rooming house. What they were was small hotels. One of the roomers told her (and Los Angeles wasn’t too big then. It wasn’t as advanced as San Francisco), she was wasting her time there. She ought to be in San Francisco where the money was. So Momma decided to go to San Francisco. In the meantime, when she got out of the convent, the first thing my sister did was she beat it. She got a job in Hollywood minding a couple of kids. She was sixteen then. And she went to Arizona, the woman took her to Arizona with her.
She had a boarding house there and my sister stayed there for quite a while until her twenties and she married a Spanish war veteran. A very nice man he was. She was married to him for twenty years before he was drowned. It was around the first of the year, 1906, I remember Momma sayin’ that night we were goin’ to San Francisco and I said “Oh, yes!” There was two ships, two boats that used to travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles- The Yale and the Harvard. One every other day and three times a week, I forget.
But at that particular time there was a war on between the two companies. So we went on the boat…I was between 11 and 12 and we went and that was a terrible trip for Momma. And all I can see is her layin’ in that cabin so sick, sick all the way, and it took 24 hours. It was a rough trip, a rough trip up to San Francisco. And I guess we got there in January or February.
We were living in a small hotel south of Market. Everything was south of Market. That’s where all the Irish were. It was between 5th and Sixth. I can’t remember to save my soul, after all these years, what came after Mission. Was it Bryant? Or Harrison? Well, Momma used to get up at five o’clock every morning and go around the corner to St Patrick’s Church (it was on Mission between 5th and 6th). And just this morning, Momma hadn’t gotten up yet. Well, she was just getting up, she had on her robe, and she was pulling on her bedroom slippers, when the house started to shake.
She hadn’t lit the lamp yet, cause if she’d lit the lamp, why, we’d both been dead because that’s what caused the fire was there was no gas or light there off Market- it was all kerosene lamps. And the lamps tipped over and the kerosene is what started the fire, see. She hadn’t lit the lamp yet. That’s what saved us. One of the roomers came bangin’ on the door, came in and the whole side of the house was on fire and he grabbed me up in his arms, and I was just in my nightgown, and Momma, and rushed us down to the street.
And, you know, it was a terrible thing. To this day, the earthquake means nothing to me because I didn’t feel it. I was asleep. And an earthquake don’t last long. But it seemed like that fire….we were running….and that fire!….that fire was chasing us, like. And we were running like anything. Me in my bare feet over glass….We got as far as Van Ness Avenue but that was about, oh my gosh, about twelve blocks. They’re long blocks there. But we got to stop every once in a while.
Market Street was quite safe. The Palace Hotel was shook up. The Palace Hotel’s still there. The Chronicle Building’s still there. The Crocker Building, those buildings are all still there. Smaller buildings crumbled, but The Emporium was the largest department store. It was right there between 4th and 5th. And the floors were like on balconies and a dome-I think they copied it from the Greek Acropolis. And the post office at 6th and Mission….that was a funny thing. That big heavy post office is still there, it sunk right down in the ground about two feet or so, but it’s still standing. See, north of market, that’s where the money was. But there was no water. They had gas over there but the gas lines were broke and the gas was pouring out, and there was no water, so they started dynamiting. Well, we got to Van Ness Avenue, and that should be a lesson to every city. It was a wide street. And everybody was walking around in a daze.
But they started dynamiting on the north side and a lot of buildings that would have withstood the shake were dynamited. So there we wandered around, and San Francisco had little parks all over. So we gathered in crowds and started up Golden Gate Avenue (it was a wide street) and we landed at Jefferson Square Park. The Army came to our assistance then, and started putting up tents. And every morning you’d see people standing outside the tents killing fleas. My God, the fleas were terrible (Josephine pauses to scratch at the memory). But one good thing it did, they used to have bedbugs in San Francisco were so big they’d carry your baggage. It was terrible. You never got a night’s sleep. You were eaten up during the night, the sheets were all spotted with blood. Bedbugs…they’re horrible things. I don’t believe anyone’s ever seen a bedbug since in San Francisco. The bedbugs were all south of market. They just bred like flies down there. There was never a bedbug seen in San Francisco again. The fire wiped ‘em right out. Wiped the bedbugs out. They were brought in, I don’t know, from all over the world, I guess.
But every morning outside these tents, we were just sleeping on the bare ground and gradually we got blankets. Finally we got a spring but no mattress. Then they formed the soup kitchen. And of course I had no clothes. People just started donating clothes from Oakland, Los Angeles and around. It’s funny how those donations go. I got one dress and ten tam o’shanters-that’s the hats they wore. Here I had those Scotch caps. I had ten of them and one dress! We used to walk down to the kitchen every night or at noon with a big bowl and get a piece of bread.
And Momma got a job, believe it or not! She got a job with a very rich family. (Hah hah!) That’s a laugh…as a kitchen maid. My Momma wouldn’t know a kitchen from a parlor. But she got this job, cause we didn’t have a dime. And later, they moved us all down south of Market again. There was a big, beautiful park down there. That’s where apartments became known. Before that there was no such thing as apartments. It was Nineteen Hundred and Six. Gosh, how many years ago was that? And we had this little apartment. It was so nice, with a little built-in stove and two bunk beds and the chair and table.
I used to go down to Chinatown and I was only 13. I used to go down there in the evening all by myself. That was Grand Avenue. I’d look in the shops and everything and get home about 8:30. No one ever molested me or bothered me. I was as safe as if I was in God’s pocket. And right on the other side of Kearney was the Red light District. That was controlled beautifully. The Board of Health took over there and it wasn’t spread around the city. Tourists used to come there. They had several big dance halls where the girls come out and danced and all. That was a great tourist attraction. But it was quite all right. You went down there with a guy and saw these places. It was a nice clean life. It was wonderful.
As I grew up, we never had any race trouble there. We didn’t have too many colored people but what we had were educated. They were nice. They lived out in Hunter’s Point. Out with the shipyards and slaughterhouse and all. Golden Gate Avenue and McAllister Street was where the Jewish people all lived. North Beach is where the Italians all lived. The Mission District was where the Irish all lived. And the Germans, I don’t remember. We had a lot of Germans but they didn’t have any particular district that I know of. But on St Patrick’s Day, even the Chinese were Irish. It was a big thing.
We used to meet on Sunday mornings and there’d be a picnic, maybe the Policeman’s picnic, or the plumbers or the iron workers or something. And everybody’d meet down at the Ferry Building with their lunch, a case of beer, a watermelon, and there’d always be a banjo or guitar. We used to go over on the boat to Fairmont Park. Oh, what good days they were! Everybody knew everybody else. They were so friendly…the most beautiful people in the world. There was no name-calling…no dirty words like dago and kike and all that stuff. We never made any distinction between anybody’s nationality. We’d dance and they’d play the guitar or the banjo going over on the ferry and we had races and everything. And then we’d all come back on the boat together and head for North Beach.
We used to go to an Italian place was 50 cents you got a wonderful lunch. And we sat at big long tables, and everything was brought in courses. And after that maybe 50 or 100 of us would all head up for Filmore and Hait. There was a big auditorium up there and we’d dance til twelve o’clock at night. Oh, it was great! We’d drag ourselves to work next day but I don’t ever remember being tired.
I was the world’s lousiest dancer. That’s why I took up swimming later…because one dance with me was like dragging one of those beer horses around. But I liked to waltz and I always liked to waltz with a fat man. Did you ever stop to think how graceful a fat man is? Look at Gleason. He was very light on his feet. Watch an elephant sometime. How they lift up their feet. Very graceful. A skinny guy jumps all over but a fat man…..
Anyway, my brother was still with Momma. My sister got married in the meantime and moved back East. So, I went to work at the Pig & Whistle. That’s one of the very exclusive candy stores in San Francisco. It’s right at the corner of Post & Kearney. The candymaker, Dan Watson was his name. I never paid any attention to him ’cause I was 17 and he was about 35. And he was considered one of the finest candymakers out on the coast. He was makin’ big money. I came home from work one night and walked down to Chinatown. And when I came back, here he was sittin’ in the kitchen with my mother. And I thought “What was he doin’ there?” and he’d just come over and introduced himself to Momma, and he being Irish and came from a Catholic family, they kinda hit it off. He had a pocketful of candy he gave to Momma.
Well, Momma liked him. So a courtship started that was more on his part than mine. He was makin’ big money at that time. Around $500.00 a month then was like $5000.00 now ’cause sugar was only five cents a pound, eggs was 15 cents a dozen, butter was 10 cents a pound, and on $500.00 a month you could certainly live like a king. So this romance on his part went on for about a year. He wanted to get married and Momma thought it was a good idea, so we got married.
And, Oh, God, he was a nice guy and all that, but he drank. He used to go down to the Relay Saloon on Market Street and treat everybody to a drink. When he’d get home he’d have about fifteen cents. He was really a man’s man- totally a bachelor.
The 1915 fair came on. And I’m telling you something now that’s never been told in San Diego before. I used to go out to the Citro Baths. I took up swimming cause I was such a lousy dancer. They had a big platform out there. I don’t know whether Citro Baths is still there but I believe it was in 1901. There was a big fair held in San Francisco. Citro was an early 49er millionaire and he built this bath for the Fair. Oh, it was an immense big pool and a big platform where the men used to do somersaults and hand springs and all.
So my girlfriend and I were big showoffs. We were prancin’ around playin’ leapfrog. So I turned around and saw my girlfriend talkin’ to some man and later I said “Who was that?” “Oh, some magazine man,” she said, “he wanted to know about us.” Later on, (this was in 1914), …I’m trying to remember the name of that magazine. It was put out by McFadden. Anyway, in the magazine was a big picture of me.
There was six entries. This girl had sent in a picture of me in my bathing suit and it came out…I don’t like to tell this cause it sounds like bragging and it don’t mean a thing to me… but I came out as the Third Most Perfect-Formed Girl in the World. McFadden’s magazine. I don’t know whether they even publish it anymore. Well, my Mother was absolutely shocked when she saw the picture.
But I got a bid from the World’s Fair. So I went out there and I was made a Greeter. I met Henry Ford and I met Edison. They were together. I met Edison’s wife and she told me he was the most absent-minded man in the world. She said she had to lay his clothes out for him ’cause he was color-blind. He was a darling man. Ford didn’t smile much…he was very stern-looking, but Edison…you wanted to love him.
And I met the great Pataruski, I met Lillian Russell, Ana Hild, I met Brady…..oh, I met so many celebrities there. And later on I opened a show featuring me, cause through that paper I got all kinds of modeling jobs which was payin’ two and a half an hour which was awful big money, workin’ four and five hours a day, and I posed for some of the biggest artists of America. But the leading sculptor of America, Stirling Calder, I posed for him. I went to Washington and posed for some statues there. I posed for quite a few of the paintings for Bernard Dixon, the man from Arizona.
And I met this man he was a 33rd degree mason and head of one of the biggest lumber companies there. And he gave me $1000.00 to pose for a model…he had me patent it…it’s called the West Wind and I’m standing on my toes with my hands are out like this, my head’s back, my hair’s flowin’ and that was on the front of his Rolls Royce. There was a write-up in the paper about that. When he’d park his car he’d take it off. First it was on his Lincoln and he’d remove it cause they’d steal it. And he’d carry it into his office. I won’t tell you the name of the lumber company, it was very famous. I don’t think he’s alive now ’cause he was in his 50′s then, but he had a family and it would be embarrassing, but he used to use it as a paperweight cause it was heavy. Through that magazine I posed for work in New York for Mrs. Whitney. And I posed again for Calder in Washington ’cause that’s where his studio was. I posed for Stackpole, a very famous painter.
But to get back to my husband and the Fair. He came out in a magazine as one of the finest candymakers on the West Coast, but he’d get drunk and give those recipes away. He was the one who brought out the candy cherries and a very rich candy only millionaires could get…Cordials with black coffee in’ em. My God, the things he put out. But a rich man wanted him to go to China to open a candy store in Shanghai. Shanghai was called the Monte Carlo of the Far East. They had a convent there and those beautiful French nuns, they did so much good. They used to pick up abandoned girl babies cause only the poor didn’t bind the baby’s feet and they’d bring ‘em in and teach ‘em to become nuns or teachers.
So he was getting $1000.00 a month on a five-year contract. That was an awful lot of money. Well, we spent over two years there but, my God, we never had a dime at the end. Every night he was out at this gambling joint, and, of course, he was much older than I was. We were staying in the Astor Hotel and you had to dress for dinner every night. I never had an evening dress in San Francisco and I couldn’t go down to dinner without an evening dress so I met a very lovely lady there. She says “Don’t worry, you’ll have an evening dress.” We got one of those Vogue books and I picked out one of those dresses I liked. Then she took me over to the silk shop and I picked out black taffeta and I was easy to fit.
I was 5’4″ and weighed 120 pounds. I showed him the design, and at 6 pm I had the dress, perfect. And, ya know, that was Chinese silk, not Japanese silk. There was no comparison. Japanese silk was flimsy stuff, but the Chinese made the best silk in the world. When I came back to San Francisco two and a half years later I had the dress made into a beautiful street dress. Then when I went down to Los Angeles I had the style changed into another street dress. Then I later had it made into a bathing suit…. later on, into pillows. That was 65 years ago and I think the girl’s still got the pillows. You couldn’t wear it out.
I just got so bored in China, but I met several painters. While I was there, you must remember, there was war going on in England and I did some nursing and talking to English boys. And I was quite attractive and I’d tell these boys about America. The Chinese people are the most wonderful people in the world. They live closer to God than any other nation. They respect their parents. There’s no such thing as mother-in-law jokes. And the children are brought up to respect their parents. And if you have one Chinese friend you don’t need any more…he’s your friend for life.
Oh, I loved ‘em. I wasn’t so crazy about the women ’cause they’re spoiled. The Chinese revere women. They did. but they were so gentle and nice…I had a Number One Boy who used to bring my tea every morning. And a Number 2 Boy that did all else and I had my own private rickshaw. But there was no place to go!
I was only in Shanghai 24 hours and got arrested. There was this Englishman smackin’ this coolie driver on the shoulder with his cane cause he wanted him to go faster. So I went over and grabbed the cane out of his hand and started beating on him. They had Shiek policemen from India, great big handsome men, and they arrested me. They took me to the police station. My husband had to come and get me out. Turns out he was a very prominent Englishman. I didn’t know that and I didn’t care who he was. He coulda been the king and I’da still hit him. Here he was beating this poor Chinese coolie. I couldn’t stand that.
The streets was filthy. The people sat on the curb. As winter came they’d sew pieces of cloth onto what they had on. And in spring they’d peel off these pieces. We never got to Peking. That was the Forbidden City. Foreigners weren’t allowed. There wasn’t a big American colony. The river running down to Shanghai was just covered with sampans. People who never stepped foot on the ground…born and raised on those sampans. And you know that river was so dirty, it was like mud. And I never saw any cattle in China because there wasn’t enough water. And the poor Chinese, I don’t know how they grew anything because they had no fertilizers. They depended on human fertilizer.
I once had a watermelon there and it had no taste to it. See, the honeydew merchants with a long pole on their shoulder would come around and collect. And you’d see them walkin’ on the street with a bucketful on each end, and their meats and stuff hangin’ off the side of the buckets heh! heh! They’re such beautiful people! And not appreciated in the world.
The first narcotics thing I remember was the opium the Turks brought into China. And that stupefied the people. See, I been in opium dens and saw them, but there was no violence to ‘em. They were like in a different world, up on cloud nine. See, China has always been overcrowded. That’s why they limit them to one child to a family now. And not enough to feed them! There was no cattle, but they had pigs. While I was there I used to see boats come in from New Zealand, and they’d be throwing off sides of mutton-no beef. Just these sides of mutton fozen stiff.
And I recall the first dinner, there was so many chicken wings. I found out later they were frog legs. The meat was so tender and good. That was all they had. The chickens just wandered around to get what they could.
You know, I don’t remember too many flowers.
And I remember getting a tomato as big as a cantaloupe. Like the watermelon, there was no taste to it cause they used human manure. But the Chinese revered their women and bound their feet. Now that I think about it, I didn’t see too many Chinese women. The men I saw were so polite. And I haven’t had a decent cup of tea since I left China. There, on every other corner was these great big clay pots with a fire under ‘em, boiling the water to make their tea. And how they drank it I don’t know. They used to drink it boiling hot. See, no matter how hot the day is, a hot drink is better than a cold drink. It cools you better.
I had my own rickshaw coolie and I paid him five dollars a month. That was big. He could live for a year on that. Rice was cheap. They talk about noodles in China but I never saw any. But one of my girls who worked for me was a Russian. When the uprising in Russia happened, her and her family crawled from Russia over Siberia to Shanghai. She said they’d hit these towns and out in the yard they’d make these noodles. The dogs went on ‘em and there was bugs and it didn’t matter but I never saw a noodle in Shanghai.
It took her and her mother and brother three months to get to Shanghai. They were fleeing the Bolsheviks and they’d hide if they heard anyone coming. The day before they left there was a big school like our West Point and the Bolsheviks marched those two hundred young cadets out onto the streets, lined ‘em all up and shot ‘em all dead.
So Shanghai was the main town then cause all the furs used to come in from Siberia. The buyers came from Chicago mostly and they were all Jews. Now in San Francisco, some of the best friends I had were Jewish people. The town was overridden with smallpox and all kinds of diseases. Somehow they survived.
And this acupuncture thing, you know they operate with it. I had some dental work done with it and you don’t feel anything. I’ll tell you something funny. You’d see the poor Chinese goin’ around with great big black & blue marks on their necks. And, nosey me, I had to find out what that meant. Well, when they got a headache they used to take two coins and pinch the skin. And it hurt so bad they forgot the headache! Hah! Poor people couldn’t afford to go to a doctor. One of the ladies there took me to an opium den. There they were peaceful and calm, up in seventh heaven. Did you ever see opium? It was in long skins like sausages and it was a very thick syrup from the beautiful poppy. It was the Turks that sent it in to China. The poor man would cook it and put it in the pipe, smoke it and lay around in bunks and pass out. That was the downfall of China was the opium.
That’s why they don’t allow today narcotics of any kind. It was the Turks who did that. Then the Germans moved in, the Japs, the English. I’ll give the French credit. The French nuns saved a lot of the Chinese women and culture. After I left, the Japs invaded China. The Germans opened a big brewery there. The Japs took it away from the Germans. That’s where the Japs got beer from.
We never did one thing to harm China. That’s why the Chinese love the Americans. And our missionaries never tried to grab any part of China or hurt them in any way. That’s why when we recognized China, the American missionaries and priest were the only ones they let in. The Catholic churches was closed down all those twenty years but secretly they were kept open all through the Communist time. But those Chinese kept those churches clean.
Now as far as Taiwan, Reagan wanted to connect them. That’s something the Chinese must handle themselves because there’s a very bitter taste in China against Taiwan. All the rich, Chiang Kai-Shek and his wives and sisters took all the money. When they left China they left the orphans and old people with not a dime. That’s when the Communists moved in. The Communists controlled China for ten years until they wiped it clean. There was nothing left. Nobody helped them.
When I left China my husband couldn’t come back with me ’cause he was under contract. I came back to this country, I think it was the last month of 1917. I can’t remember if we were at war with Germany yet. My, how that first world war altered everything. A whole new America resulted from that war. First, silk disappeared. There’s no silkworms in Japan today. That’s where nylon came in. we lost all the rubber plantation rubber and started manufacturing our own rubber.
And one of the worst things to happen to America was Prohibition. I can remember as a kid, you never saw a woman in a saloon. They had separate family rooms where you could go in and have a beer. The big thing was ice cream parlors. After a show the family went in and had hot chocolate. That was the big thing in my day. The 1900′s. I was in Australia in the 20′s when Prohibition happened. I was so fascinated by the word “speakeasy” and the way you had to knock at the door and they’d peek through the peek hole to let you in and that’s what I faced when I came back from Australia. I was so fascinated. And I ‘d never had a drink in my life.
And everybody was makin’ Near Beer so I decided to make it, too. I didn’t know how to make it but nobody in the house could get in the bathroom for two months. So I got my brother workin’ filling bottles. I don’t know why I was doin’ it, cause I didn’t drink the stuff. And the corks blew off all the bottles. We almost had to move out of the house. That was the end of my experience with bootlegging. Drinks! You could get all the drinks you wanted during Prohibition but my, they was terrible. You were drinking pure alcohol.
I used to go down to the speakeasy with some people, course I didn’t drink…and you’d knock at the door and they’d peek through a keyhole, and if they knew you you could get in. There was a very famous place in San Francisco, down in the basement, and they supplied you with a little wooden hammer. And everybody’d sit and hit the tables with those hammers while ordering this phony beer. And that was a big night in San Francisco!
There was another place, Bucket Of Blood, you went up the stairs. An awful place where you got phony gin and beer. And the result of all this, why I say it was a terrible law….all the legitimate business people went broke and all those bootleggers became millionaires. And all the business ever since has been controlled by gangsters, all on account of Prohibition. But people want to forget it, they don’t want to remember those terrible days, but that was what happened.
I was a poor bootlegger, and my brother and mother were glad to be able to take a bath again. Money seemed to be plentiful and it was like humpty dumpty on the wall when the Depression hit. Regardless of what anybody says, I blame it on Prohibition because before Prohibition we had these beautiful breweries. They went out of business. The only wine allowed was this sacramental wine for churches for the Jewish people and you had to get a permit to buy that. The beer was spiked with alcohol and was dangerous to drink.
But so many businesses all across the United States went out of business because of Prohibition. And what was left that was of any account was all owned by gangsters. Prohibition is what ruined us. Young people ought to pay more attention to laws from the past…..
Josephine turns her head and looks out her window at the passing cars. I sit quietly for a few minutes and then stand up to leave. Irritated that my movement has brought her back to the present, Josephine turns back to me and says
“Don’t let the cat out.”
Copyright 1998
T.J. Knowles Publishing
Recorded June 1998 at the Red Roof Apartments in Encinitas, CA