Oral History Program Max Ryujin Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 18 September 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Max Ryujin Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 18 September 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial house flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and business related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other small operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Ryujin, Max, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 18 September 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Max Ryujin September 18, 2013 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Max Ryujin. The interview was conducted on September 18, 2013, by Lorrie Rands, in Max’s office. Max discusses his experiences with 25th Street. Elliot McNally is on camera. LR: Max, I hope it’s okay to call you Max, I always mean to ask and I always forget. MR: Well, my last name, they’ve Americanized it to Roo-jin, but it’s actually, if you come from Japan, it’s Roo-jeen. LR: Roo-jeen. Ryujin. MR: But, might as well not confuse anybody anyway, you know, so— LR: So, kind of starting off simply with when and where you were born. MR: I was born here at the old St. Ben’s on the top of 30th Street, so that was about 65 years ago. We lived, actually, in the restaurant, per se, in the old projector room. The location of the restaurant used to be an old theater, so my dad and my mom lived in the projection room. It was in the front and it was right behind the neon sign. Then, my uncle lived in the back with his family. LR: And the restaurant, where was it located? MR: 225 25th Street. LR: And it was called? MR: The Star Noodle. LR: The Star Noodle, okay. So, did your parents own the Star Noodle? MR: Yes, well, it was George, his brother, and my dad. My dad started out when he came here. I guess he worked at the old Temple Noodle. The story he told me was the fact that he was waiting tables there when he was younger, you know, 2 right after the war and he was watching everybody in the kitchen and said, “I can do this.” So, he just eventually started his own place and went from, I can’t remember what the first location was, it was in a labor temple, and then he moved it down to where he is at 225. And then back in the sixties, he bought the grocery store and the hotel that was next door and turned that into one building where one side was the dining room and the other side was the main dining room. LR: Okay, so— MR: 1944. LR: Thank you. That was my next question. MR: Yes, that’s when he started, it was about 1944 when he was in the location he was in at 225. LR: So, you mentioned earlier that you were five when you started working. MR: Well, I lived there, so, you know, obviously went to school there at the old Grant school. It used to be down by the old Fisher Hess Wyneck. I used to remember looking out the window at the restaurant, although the window was right behind the Dragon’s Tail before it was remodeled. I used to remember watching all the people walk from the Union Station. We used to have a lot over on the east side where the Native Americans, when they’d come in off the trains, they would use that as a camp site where they would just camp out there overnight or whatever. It was the old days where we had a lot of bars, where we had a lot of crime going on, you might say, a lot of assaults, a lot of, you know, I hate to say it, but a lot of murders, I mean, just down on the corner. It was pretty colorful, I just remember 3 growing up on 25th Street because we didn’t move from that location until I was probably about seven, so I was the oldest of the three brothers. It’s just one of those things from my childhood that comes from there until I was seven as far as the street location. LR: When you moved from living, so you lived above the restaurant, right? MR: Yes. LR: When you moved from there, where did you move to? MR: To 33rd Street. That was when it was a pretty nice area through there. It was still farm country and it was by where the old—I think it was the Motor-Vu Drive-In where K-Mart was before and now it’s Costco. The drive in was there, John Affleck Park was just down the road and so it was when Ogden—when the stop light stopped at 28th Street and then after that it was just dark. So, I remember those old days before the lights went all the way out. LR: Once you moved, would you go back and work there during the day? MR: I worked there all the way up until actually it closed. I have been in real estate 35 years, but when I went and got married the first time, I had two kids and I worked the restaurant during the day time, I mean, during the evening, and went to college at night and after I graduated from Weber State, I worked there in the evening and did my real estate during the day time. So, I’ve always worked there. Then, being a single father at that point, after I got divorced, I raised my kids and wondered why my whites weren’t white and why I had spots on my dishes and I had food containers in the fridge, as I raised my kids. It was one of those that I think about all the things I did back then and I don’t have the energy obviously to 4 do it now. I kind of burned at both ends of the candle because during that period of the time, I was president of the board, I was president of Utah Hockey, I was still teaching and helped develop a national curriculum for fair housing, so that’s why I’m still involved in fair housing right now. I do teach for the state, I’m a certified instructor and I do a core course for the Division of Real Estate. LR: It’s amazing you had time to sleep. MR: Oh yeah, well, I used to sleep, but when I had my open heart surgery a couple of years ago, it was I think in February of 2012, so about a year and ten months ago or so. I had, I guess they call it a quintuple bypass. Made it sound worse than it was, but it was a five-bypass that I had. They told me, “Take it seriously, and you’ve got a 50/50 chance of making it,” so I was prepared to see the white light and check out, like when you’re in a hotel. The last thing I remember was kind of waking up and feeling a tube down my throat and my hands being tied down, so it wasn’t a good experience. LR: No—it doesn’t sound like it. MR: But, that’s when I started slowing down. I used to be able to sleep maybe four or five hours a day, and then be able to do all of that. Now, I’ve got to get eight or more or I just, I go into comas during the day and I get tired. My mom, when we closed the restaurant down, I think it was in 2007, my dad passed away in 1999, and they ran it for a while with my two brothers. It was one of those that, he came to me in a dream and told me to sell the building, so I sold it and so now she lives with me in an apartment that I have in my house. She’s 91, so she still lives with me, but I remember the years at the restaurant, during—we went through a 5 remodeling stage in the sixties where we had gutted everything and put in a new kitchen and put in a new dining room and that’s when we acquired the building to the east of us and turned that into a dining room. So, I was involved all that time and during all that time, I went back and cooked. I was one of the short order cooks with my dad, so he taught me how to do that stuff when I was a kid. I was always, “Oh, I want to help, I want to help,” but I used to mop floors and wash dishes, and so I’ve gone through the whole gamut of the restaurant. LR: Having grown up on 25th Street, what are some of your favorite memories of that street? MR: Like I said before, watching the trains come in and watching the Native Americans. You could just tell when the train came in because the street would fill up. I remember the 25th Street and Washington Boulevard was like what you would see when you would watch T.V. like from New York and talk about people in the streets, I remember that. I remember during the winter time, my brother, my second oldest brother younger than me, we used to go out the side and make snowballs and throw them at the people and go hide and just jump back from the window and do stupid things like that. But I just remember how busy the street used to be back in the old days when the Broom Hotel was there and the bus station and the Trailway Station, I mean, the whole architecture of the street. I had my views on downtown before they tore it down and put in the Bon Marche, which obviously during redevelopment and then now that it’s down they had to start all over again and I was not in favor of that. That might be off the record as far as that goes, because I always felt as though the old downtown 6 they had, that if they were going to do anything, they should do what they did in Georgetown, where they took all the old fronts, the old facades and kept them all and developed them all in the back where you would go in the front, and it would still look like old Georgetown, and you walk in the back, and then you walk out into a modern mall. That’s what I envisioned down there, because I sat on the Multicultural Advisory Committee for Ogden City for seventeen years—fifteen— seventeen years, something like that. I did a lot of things during that period of time, the time I did that I was still working at the restaurant. As I started to try to wind down, my family grew older and I got busier. I tell my mom and dad that I was the guest cook, but one of the things I remember was that out of respect for my dad, I used to speak Japanese to him all the time. So, at one point in time, when I was in junior high school, I took Spanish and English, and I spoke Japanese. As a matter of fact, Japanese was my first language. I couldn’t speak a word of English until I was five and my mom was worried that I’d go to school and get made fun of because of everything else that was going on. So, she sent me over to the Japanese people that owned the grocery store down across the parking lot on the east of us, and sent me over there during the day time so that I could learn English. Then, within a few months I was speaking English. I used to practice my Japanese with my dad and my kids and the waitresses would look at me wondering what the heck I was saying, but then it was interesting. You ask me about memories, that’s—I wish I had that. My dad has been gone for a while now, fourteen years, so I’ve have nobody to practice on and my granddaughter asked, “Will you teach me?” I said, 7 “You know, first, in order to speak Japanese you have to think Japanese,” because actually when you speak Japanese it’s kind of like if you listen to Yoda from Star Wars. It’s bass-ackwards, if you know what I mean. That’s the way you speak the language. The dialects are different too. If you’re what they call an Issei, first generation, Issei, Sensei, you know, the different generations. You can tell whether people have learned it or whether they come back. I used to talk to all my dad’s friends in Japanese. He used to be what they called in the old days a “shinging” which is kind of a Japanese opera. He used to be the instructor and on Mondays when the restaurant was closed, all the older first-generation Japanese would come in and have their little gathering they used to have and I used to spend a lot of time talking to them. That was a long time ago. If I’m 65 now, that puts me about—like all the things that happened that we indicated about the war and the concentration camps—that was before I was born. LR: Right. So, the restaurant opened in 1944 and you were born in? MR: 1948. LR: Okay, because I was doing the math in my head and it didn’t make sense. The question I want to ask is this: In 1944, did your dad and his brother have a hard time establishing themselves because of their descent or did that—? MR: Good question. I wasn’t there, I didn’t feel it, I just know that people that I’ve talked to—because I do fair housing training, and I had the privilege of working with the justice department HUD when we did the national curriculum. The people that went through that period of time, whether they were Japanese or 8 German or Italian or whatever, they all had their different stories, so diversity through adversity to some degree, and so people’s view and the way they look at things is much different. It’s interesting because as we were doing diversity training, it’s kind of like Japanese and Chinese, their Asian descent, but then their cultures are so different, it’s like the difference between night and day. When we used to teach diversity and when we developed the course, it was one that they kept talking about Feng Shui and Feng Shui depends on when you were born, what direction your head should be pointed for the positive Chi and stuff. We kept on hearing about it as something that I decided we had to make part of our curriculum, because all the different races and cultures—there are a lot of people, especially in California, that believe in Feng Shui and people here. It really kind of works, because my third wife happened to be the same as me, as the first woman I met in fifty some odd years that was the same Feng Shui and I haven’t got to the point where I want to choke her yet, so we get along better than most, if you know what I mean. When you asked me about the diversity and if they had a hard time, I know I’ve heard stories that the chief of police, Captain Teeter, and all these other people from the past would always come in and my dad used to give discounts to the police because they were on 25th Street and just for coming in to eat. We always had kind of a presence, a police presence there, so I guess it was good. But I really couldn’t tell you what it was like because I wasn’t there to experience it, I just hear the stories that went on during that time. That’s when the tunnels were there down underneath 25th Street, the ones they found when 9 they did the Broom Hotel and they found all the slot machines in all the tunnels. I remember downstairs at the restaurant between the walls there’s a place that you can slide through. It would go out to the street because, if you’ll remember, back in the old days on 25th Street they had those metal things in the sidewalk. LR: Trap doors. MR: And you’d open them up and they went down there. There used to be a building that’s right to the east of our old building that my dad bought and tore down for parking. It was called the old Neesay Jewelers. There was a hotel upstairs and downstairs and we tore that down and I remember going down there in the building next door, and there were places that you could get under the street from there, but they filled it all in years ago. LR: Staying on that theme, growing up on 25th Street, and I realize you were on the second half of the street, not the one closest to Wall, I know there was some discrimination on the street back in the day. Were you ever witness to any of that? MR: Well, I think I was probably isolated and I know that my dad and my cousin, they used to be kind of a little rowdy type of deal. If they saw another Japanese person, let’s say if they had, I guess my dad used to call it the old zoot-suits, they used to just go and just knock the crap out of them and told them to brace up, because I guess they were having a tough enough time with discrimination without their own kind acting like idiots they felt. My cousin was actually the reverend of the Buddhist Church, so it’s one of those things. He was a black belt in Katataya, it’s kind of weird because we used to have a Judo club downstairs 10 where they, from my understanding, where there used to be an old gambling establishment, because there used to be steel doors. I remember seeing tables for craps and things like that. But there used to be a Judo club down there years and years ago. I did Judo up until I was 14, until I ripped all my back ligaments out. But we used to have some red belts that came from Japan, which is a fifth degree black belt or higher because it goes up to ten degrees where it’s black and white and then you get to red. So, they used to be quite colorful down there. We used to get some personalities there. The restaurant, if you take a look at the movie, “On a Midnight Clear,” and “It’s a Boy’s Life,” you will see our restaurant and the neon sign in the movie, per se. As a matter of fact, “On a Midnight Clear,” it just clearly, one of the shots starts out—it’s the one where the American soldiers were fighting in Germany and the relationship between the enemy when there was a standoff, and then it flashes back to when they were on leave and it just shows the restaurant. A great shot of the restaurant sign and them talking. So, we’ve been in a few movies. I can’t remember which one it was that Dennis Hopper was in where it shows him coming out of the restaurant. There were a lot of times that they used that because—I remember my dad used to get upset because it shut the street down and we wouldn’t get busy, but the film people would come in and at least eat. He tells me the time when North Carolina, the basketball team, when Weber State University was part of the NCAA—when they came into town and we had one of the regional plays here. When North Carolina’s team came in Dad would always tell me, he said, “You can’t believe how big they were because 11 they all had to bend down to get in when they came in to eat.” Tommy LaSorta, when it was the Ogden Dodgers, would walk down from the Ben Lomond Hotel and come down and eat. It’s quite colorful as far as the memories my dad told me about when he was alive. LR: So it was really a famous place to be. MR: Well, yeah, as a matter of fact, it’s kind of interesting that at my age and Carl and I, you know, we just spoke about that. We had a very good friend of ours and fraternity brother that passed away and we got together and people thought when we split the partnership up years ago before I went to a franchise company. Everybody thought it was like one of those departures that we were growling and biting each other. No, it was, we were always friends, but he wanted to stay uptown and I wanted to go downtown. It was a location situation and we both did Fannie Mae’s and so it was that we have always been friends. I guess it goes back to the fact that no matter what happens—it was like when I found out after my Dad passed away, that it was his father-in-law, Don, who hid him. It was kind of ironic because I didn’t know about that until after he died. I couldn’t figure out why he’d come in every week and they were so close. Don and his wife, Shirley, just recently passed away, but it’s kind of the flashbacks that I have of them coming in and remembering what they ate. Most people, after everything I’ve gone through, my experiences and all the different things I’ve done, I see some of my old friends now at my high school reunions and all they want me to do is come over and cook for them. So, it’s one of those that, I just got back from Bear Lake and there was a golf pro up there, 12 Bob Bentley, I don’t know, but he was a motorcycle cop and he came into the restaurant and it was funny when I first met him with Rich Little up in Bear Lake a few years ago. The first thing Bob said to me after he found out that it was our family that had the restaurant, he started talking about how he was missing the chicken salad and the food. It’s funny because that’s the people that, they don’t remember my teaching. I’ve spent all those years with the national association and developed a national curriculum, so I teach a lot. You know, besides the real estate, and when I was younger, I was a member of a rock and roll band and we did all of the opening acts with the Beach Boys and the Raiders, Paul Revere and the Raiders back in the sixties. We’ve done Patio Gardens, The Terrace, and all those places, and the bar circuit. But they don’t remember that. Some of them do, but most of them say, “Well, you know, I’m kind of missing your food.” They say that and I start thinking, “Well, I am too. I’d like to have another dinner salad or some breaded veal or something, you know. I remember those, and so I still have those cravings. I don’t cook now except maybe once in a while with my wife. I cook the meat, but other than that I don’t like to cook. When you spend about 50 years, you figure, cooking, and since we closed the restaurant, I finally stopped working there. I miss it, but I don’t, if you know what I mean. It’s really hard work from 5:00 until 2:00 in the morning, which were our hours back in the old days. Bob reminded me that everybody used to come in and eat to get sobered up after they went out partying at two in the morning. On the weekends we’d stay open until 3:00a.m., which meant that my social life occurred between three and five in 13 the morning. I’d get up late and then I went through and it was amazing that I finally graduated from college with the schedule that I had, but that’s how we grew up. You know, when your parents own a restaurant. LR: Now, further down the street there was the Chinese Temple, I believe it was called. My question is, was there any competition between the restaurants on that street or did you each have your own— MR: Oh there always—well, the reason why they call it a noodle parlor, most people don’t know it, is in the old days, every restaurant had their own recipe for their noodles. We made our own noodles downstairs. My uncle used to work at the bakery, and then he’d come in at night a couple of nights a week to make our noodles. So, it started off—everything was from scratch. It wasn’t store bought or anything, and we’d sit and knead all of that and we had to get a special noodle machine from Japan—expensive. They used to go downstairs and make the noodles so we would have them for the week and we would have new inventory. We used to make all of our noodles, but every restaurant had their own recipe. I’m trying to think, there used to be the Canton of Washington over by where the old Orpheum used to be and where the Weber County Senator is. There used to be the Bamboo Noodle, there used to be the Utah Noodle, there used to be Kay’s Noodle on Kiesel, there were just tons of noodle places. There was one I’m trying to remember the name of—it was right there almost on the corner of Wall—but it was a Chinese restaurant. There were Chinese restaurants and Japanese restaurants and so, it was one of those things where we were Japanese serving a Chinese cuisine, chow mein and stuff. But then you get 14 these true Japanese restaurants like you get Tona’s and stuff that are traditional Japanese restaurants. But back in those—I call it the commercialized menu—and my dad, as far as the menu goes, made it up with what people liked. So, that’s how it started and that’s why we had a domestic menu with steaks and top sirloins and even oysters and shrimp and then we had our standard combination dinners that had chow mein and those kinds of things. I remember the menu, but most of the time, we spent time what we call, food prepping. On Mondays we would be closed and Tuesdays we’d start our food prep and food prep all the way up for Friday and Saturday and as the business goes on during Wednesday, Thursday, and before Friday, obviously we were using that, but we would also gear up for the weekends because the weekends were so busy. Sunday, we would start our food prep again to at least get through Sunday and then start all over again on Tuesday. Mondays were like our holidays because it was the only time we had off. Mondays, my dad used to take us bowling and take us to Lagoon and all this other stuff, so that’s the way our schedule ran. Monday was our happy day, you might say. LR: So you were open from— MR: 5:00 in the afternoon LR: Until… MR: 2:00 in the morning on the weekdays and 3:00 in the morning on Fridays and Saturdays. LR: And you were on that schedule until—what year did it close? 15 MR: 2007. We finally talked my mom and dad into cutting back the hours in the last ten years or so back about an hour because in the old days, and I say this because besides the noodle parlors, there wasn’t a lot of restaurants in Ogden. Then as time marched on, all of a sudden, here came the McDonald’s and the Taco Times and all the little places. I mean, back in the old days, I think it was Keely’s café on Kiesel and 24th Street that I remember going there and eating with my mom. That’s where we would have lunch on Mondays. I remember walking downtown like to J.C. Penney and stuff when that was there. I remember the Broom Hotel. I remember Keely’s was—there was another—what was the name of that—it was right on Washington with the ice cream bar and stuff? But, that’s what I remember of the old Ogden. Ogden is nothing like it was back in those days. I kind of felt bad that we lost a lot of that character. Like I say, I like to see progress and change, but then when it comes to the city and the infrastructure and just those things, yeah you have progress, but I really hated to see downtown go when they took out that block out from 23rd Street and down to that temple. I mean it had so much character on both sides of the street, but it’s gone now. I mean, there’s nothing you can do to replace it. Then on Kiesel, where we used to have a lot of the places there, you know, they’re gone and it’s all commercialized. I remember where AOL used to be there, I can’t remember what’s there right now, I probably should know as a realtor, but I remember Grant School. They talk about inner city schools and I do remember our playground. It’s not like our kids have now and I’m glad our kids 16 are better because our playground, I remember, had stickers so if you fell down in the playground, you’d have those little stickers in your hands and your feet. If you had tennis shoes or shoes, you’d be a couple of inches taller from just walking on that stuff, you know what I mean? But, when they took that out, and I’m trying to remember what’s there, but I think it was that old—I sold a couple of businesses down there years and years ago, but that’s all changed. Fisher Hess Wyneck used to be down there on the corner of 23rd and Grant on the southwest corner. So, yeah, things have changed a lot just in the time that I’ve been around. I didn’t think I was that old, but I’ve got eight grandkids now, so that kind of gives you a hint. My children are 37, 32, and 31. But, time marches on is all I could say. LR: That it does. When the railroad stopped being the main factor on 25th Street, did a lot of other businesses die out during that time? MR: Yeah, as a matter of fact, I remember coming down 25th Street where the only sign that we could see was our dragon because all the businesses had shut down and they were coming and going and coming and going. This was before they had the 25th Street redevelopment. I sat on the, it was called the Northern Utah Capital Development Corporation, I sat on that committee. It started out as the 25th Street Historic Committee and I served on that for years. As a matter of fact, the watch that I’ve got, they gave to me when they finally threw me off that thing. I spent quite a few years, on the average about 15 years or so, with the Ogden City MAC committee, the Multicultural Advisory Committee. They asked me to sit on that when it first came about and then I think it was Mayor Godfrey 17 who finally got rid of it and I remember some of the members saying that they’re not as effective as they used to be. I did all of this civic work, I guess you can kind of tell when you look around. I did all this civic work, but I don’t do that many anymore. The only one I do is, I sit with the Weber County Sherriff’s Department’s CJAC, or their Citizen’s Advisory and Justice Advisory Committee. It’s kind of a spin-off of internal affairs. I still sit on that and I still try to stay active with the board because I was past president and those kinds of things. I think I was past president back in 1991. That was about halfway through my career and I got the president’s award from Gary Herbert, our now governor. Him and I have been very good friends for years and we golf, but then he gave me a president’s award I think in 1988 and what is it now? And see, I’ve just got started, I’m not finished yet. I still teach and I’ve been allowed to do that because I don’t have to go to the restaurant during the day time. But, I used to guest cook toward the end. I’d only come in on New Year’s to help them cook because of just the volume they would get as far as that goes. I was their guest cook the last few years, but other than that, I put in my time. My mom, my brothers were there and called mom the slave driver and my dad. When Dad passed away, things slowly slowed down because of just the mass influx of restaurants and those things and it got to the point where my dad came to me in a dream and said, “It’s time to sell the place,” and being a real estate broker, I did. We’re still looking for the sign and I think Carl can tell you more about the status of the sign and what we need to do than I could. That’s 18 why I came back, like I said, full circle. So, we’ve just got to sit down and talk and he’s busy and I’m always busy and what can I say? LR: I understand that. I have one more quick question. You’ve kind of hinted at it a little bit, from when you remember 25th Street in the early, late fifties to what it is today, do you think that they’ve done a good job in creating the atmosphere they have or would you have rather seen it go a different direction? MR: I think it probably went the direction it needed to go, because I think that they seem to have kept the character, and that’s one of the things that certain cities have that if they lose, they lose everything. They’ve kept the character there and we’ve got more businesses and so I’m glad to see that it’s the way it should be, or should have been. I know that it just seems like, and maybe it’s just because of my memories getting different, but it seemed like even in the older days when I was a kid, this was what 1953 when I was about five years old until about 1957. I kind of remember that because I didn’t move from 25h Street until then and I went to school there. It seemed like it was busier then, but then it was probably a little bit more shadier back then than it is now, so I’m glad to see it’s gone to where it did. I wish that the downtown area, Washington Boulevard, would improve like that, but I guess somewhere is better than none. I know that I worked with Mayor Meacham for a long time when he was there and then with Matthew, what’s his name, I forget his last name. Matthew, I want to say something else, but, anyway, I worked with a lot of the mayors through there, worked a little bit with Mayor Dirks, but then that was the controversial period of time when Mayor Dirks 19 was in. That’s when they put in the Bon Marche and that project back in those days. I did more work with Meacham and Godfrey, that’s who it is, Matthew Godfrey. So, I haven’t really worked with Bob Caldwell yet. I haven’t had the chance to sit down with him. I sat on their, what do they call it, every city has what they call community block grants and I sat on their committee for, and I’m trying to think of what it was, oh, it was the Citizen’s Advisory Committee. When we’d get government funds, we were designated an enterprise community a few years back and we were the committee that helped, at least with our funding and grants, where the money was going, so I remember going through grant applications because every city has to do what they call a five year consolidating plan. When they do the five year consolidating plan, part of that is what they call analysis of impediments of fair housing for 35 or so years. We went through to, I guess, develop or at least find out what impediments are. Most people when you ask them, what do you think the impediments are in fair housing and diversity? Because I know part of this article is about diversity, people sit and say, “Oh, it’s got to be race, so it’s got to be this or it’s got to be that.” What’s interesting is that the number one complaint that the Department of HUD gets today and the number one complaint in the State of Utah in analysis of impediments, basically indicate that the lack of the general public and real estate professionals—I hate to say it because I teach at the board every month—do not understand what the Civil Rights Law is all about or the Fair Housing Act. They say, “Well, it’s got to be race and it’s got to be this and that.” It is not. Currently, 20 the number one complaint in Utah and the United States, is accessibility issues and number two is families with children. I’m one of those proponents and I guess I could throw this in while we are speaking about it—because of the way our industry is, and I’ve always been a proponent and we are still pushing the accessibility issue. When we start talking about accessibility, contractors, realtors say, “Oh it’s going to cost too much money. Blah, blah, blah.” But, the thing I think we need to do is, and I’m trying to get to the legislative process—but when I got my heart operation, it kind of slowed me down there—but it’s to at least create, in our building code in Utah, what we call a class C accessibility which is called visitability. Visitability, a lot of people don’t know what that term is, I mean, it took me years to get that put in our MLS system. It means: can somebody with a disability come to your house and chill with you during Thanksgiving, Easter, or Christmas? Or do you have to go to Denny’s or somewhere they can get into. If they would make all the houses at least class C, what they call, visitable—I was working with another Utah Builder’s Association and do you know how much more it costs when we computed by changing the floor plan to make a house visitable when they build it, how much more it would cost? LR: Probably not much. MR: How much would you think? LR: There’s not a lot that would need to be changed, really. I’m not really good with building numbers, but I can’t see it being more than maybe one or two thousand dollars. 21 MR: Well, even at one or two thousand dollars, that’s wrong, it’s only about 250 bucks to make a house visitable. Now, think about the fact of all of our young kids and all of our grandkids, if they could buy a house that’s already visitable, in other words, wider hallways, no step entry, it doesn’t have to be the front door; you don’t have to ruin the design of the house. It could be a garage door, it could be a back patio door. But just the first floor, you make the hallways wide enough for a wheelchair, and make the doorway in the bathroom wide enough for a wheelchair and to do a U-turn, put in some grab bars. Then if you had a bedroom on the main floor, and I say this because we, as a society, throw all of our old people away. I hate to say that, but if you take an old house on the avenues here and try to retrofit it with a ramp and that kind of stuff, those old bungalows built in the forties and fifties, it would cost 15-20 thousand dollars to retrofit it. You’ve got old blaff and plaster and you have all this other stuff you’ve got to go through. It’s a pain. If they would design the houses, from the very beginning, to be visitable, even if you had, it’s not that we require a bedroom on the main floor, but if you had one, and there usually is, could you imagine? Some people don’t want their parents or relatives living with them anyway, but then some do. You know, by tradition, or, let’s say, by our culture, Japanese, we take care of our parents. So, just think of all the people saying, “Well, I would like to at least have my parents, or, my mom or my dad or whoever’s left, have the quality of life they gave to me. But because of the way their house is designed, there is a time and place for assisted living and for rest homes, but if we had a building code, if all new 22 construction were visitable and so no matter what they built, young people could buy a house, their starter home, and have it so that if they kept that home or if they got older and—we’re finding this out from our soldiers coming home from the war. They’re coming back the way they haven’t been. You know, it’s one of the things, “Well, you’re the real estate professional, find me a house that’s accessible or at least visitable.” They can’t. There’s no inventory. So that’s the reason why I think I made it through open heart surgery, was to whine at everybody to quit smoking and quit being stupid, but also the fact of making people aware that we do have a visitability issue. I mean, if before I checked out for the last time, if we had a building code that says that all homes and new construction single family, the main floor had to be visitable, that would improve the quality of life for so many people, but we don’t do that. The majority of our population in the state of Utah is going to be over 65. I’m one of them and I keep on hearing, “I can’t find a house that I can get in with the wheelchair.” I happen to be fortunate enough, I own a four-level split, but the main floor by the garage is main level. My mom doesn’t come upstairs a lot, but she has a place to live. It’s one of those things that if they would just make that a standard just to make it visitable, just think of all the people that can benefit that are coming home from war, and people that are getting older, which we have more of a population of. So, that’s one of the things that if people ask me to come do a fair housing training, because I do training for the department of HUD on accessibility. 23 Now I’m not an expert on accessibility and all of the how many inches this and that does, but I do the fair housing training for realtors. It’s a core course, so they have to take it. I’ve got a four hour, I’ve got a two hour, and I’ve got a one hour certifying class that I do for the state. Then I also am certified to do a six hour diversity course that NAR certified me to do, but I helped develop the course as far as that goes. People ask me, of all of the things I’ve done—and I’m proud of the fact that I played rock and roll music and was able to open up for the Beach Boys and the Raiders six or seven times and that’s one of my accomplishments. The other one, besides the restaurant, in real estate, was the fact that in 1991, I worked with the Department of Justice and HUD and developed the national curriculum for fair housing. That picture of Henry Cisneros I got when I was national chair. It’s something that I guess I’m a firm believer and I got involved in there my first year in real estate back in 1979. The executive officer asked me to be the fair housing chairman. I said, “What do they do?” He said, “I don’t know.” And so, usually you start out at the board level and you work yourself up to the state level and then you go to the national level. There are three tiers in real estate. Well, I went to the national level and went to a convention, paid for it all myself. I wish I had a nickel for every mile I traveled, but I went to national and I met the executive vice president for national in charge of fair housing and he took me under his arm. He was an African- American attorney, very bright. He says, “Hey, this is what it’s all about. It’s not about black and white, it’s just about discrimination itself.” It was interesting, you 24 are supposed to stay on a national committee for three years, I spend 17 years on a national level and they gave me the opportunity. I was the national chairman for the fair housing forum, which you see that little bowl on that shelf? I got that from—our national president was from Hawaii, so I chaired the forum. I also chaired the full equal opportunity committee and during that time, we negotiated the Voluntary for Remarketing Agreement, we redid our education, changed our Article 10, the Code of Ethics, and I got to participate in the development of the national curriculum. When I wrote up my curriculum, I sent it back and they said, “Well, these are the things that you recommend, and this is why.” And so, I told them why, so they asked me to come back and they ended up changing that to their national model, as far as the things of keeping records and of objective information and all those other things. There are five points that we did, so when I teach I don’t use notes. It just depends, so my biggest fear, when I had my open heart surgery was that—sometimes they say you lose your memory—and that freaked me out because I figured that if I lost my memory, I couldn’t teach anymore. But, I think about six or seven months after I had my surgery, I started teaching again, so I still teach in Salt Lake and in Ogden and I do the Board Orientation and I do the Annual, they have the Apartment Owner Association and I do a class down in Salt Lake at the South Town Center. So, it’s one of those things that, I actually enjoy probably teaching more than I did cooking, other than the eating part of it, if you know what I mean. 25 LR: I know what you mean. I know I said that was my last question, but I like to ask this as the last question. Do you have any other memories of 25th Street that you’d like to share? MR: It’s one of those that I guess, it’s something that I can’t remember everything because I spent a lifetime down there. You know how it is sometimes when you can’t sleep, all of a sudden you get something that comes into your head—a song that you can’t get out of your head—sometimes there are memories that come back to me that I think, “Oh yeah, I remember that,” but the general memories I have is—number one, if I was to break it down, 25th Street was much, much busier than it was today even. The second thing is the food, I can’t forget the food because, you know, I crave it a lot and obviously all of my old friends, my class reunion, and all the people that I run into. I’ve got one of my— that owns the Iron Horse, Mike, he’s always saying, “Well, why don’t you get the group back together?” It’s interesting, my old group, the original one, were all still alive. Other groups I was in after, a lot of them passed away, which I guess gives us a hint of our mortality. But back in those days, I remember having to, I was fortunate enough, to get into the Reserves. If I wouldn’t have got into the Reserves, I would probably not be sitting here talking to you today. It’s one of those that, when I went to—the real awakening was going to basic training back in 1966 or 1967 and going to Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, home of the 101st Airborne. Back in the old days, you may not believe it now, but I was a jock. I made the wrestling team as a sophomore, played sophomore football, baseball, and 26 that stuff. But I remember when I went to basic training, the Battalion commander called me in and wanted me to be an Airborne Ranger. Fort Campbell, Kentucky was the home of the 101st Airborne. I was in an artillery battalion; they taught me how to hit a garbage can at 17 miles within 50 yards. That’s what I was school trained to do, but he wanted me to go Airborne Ranger, he said, “Hey, you don’t have to spend six years in the Army, you could be out in 18 months if you sign up regular Army and become an Airborne Ranger.” I said, “Sir, not to be disrespectful, but I’ve got a life to live when I go home and if I jump out of an airplane, being of Japanese ancestry, I’m going to hit the ground and I’m going to get shot from both sides. Do I look stupid, or what?” He says, “Well, I understand your concern, but you know, we need people like you on the ground.” I said, “No, I don’t want to go.” So, I did my six year stint with the reserves. I was what they call a 13 eccle 20, I was a fire direction controller for a battalion. That’s what we did, we would send weather balloons up and get messages, and it was interesting because during that period of time, when you talk about the restaurant, we started out to be a 105 battalion, with little guns they pulled behind the jeeps. They took all those guns to Vietnam, so they gave us 155’s, the ones you pull behind the two and a half ton trucks. They took all those to Vietnam. So, they put us in a, what they call a 175 battalion, which is what we call “long toms” and at that point in the old days, I got clearance to shoot nuclear rounds. I mean, you talk about back in the old days, okay? Then, they took all those and then all of a sudden they were finding out that the Vietcong had discovered if you wipe out all the fire direction controllers, because they used to 27 have the targets here, the fort observers here, and the fire direction controllers by radio back here. We would get information from the fort observer and we would tell them where the target was and how to set their guns. Well, we went to eight inch self-propelled and they said that I had a critical MOS, because all of the fire direction controllers who were regular Army, were wiped out. So, they said that and I switched over to the National Guard, so I went from the Army Reserves, the 683rd over here on 2nd Street and went to the 145th over here at the old armory in South Ogden. What was interesting about that is I remember they used to let me—because as a PFC when I first got back, I ran a battalion. So you’ve got five or six batteries with about five or six guns apiece, so I had to control all of these guns. Our chief of section for battalion, was what we call a gun buddy, so he didn’t know the difference between a sight stick and a ruler, so he asked me to do the safety cards in the battalion missions and he said, “Well, if you do that, then you could wear a wig, you can go home at nights and work at the restaurant and work in the rock and roll group. We’d have our first formation at 8:30 and they’d cover for me and we’d just go down to Camp Williams. This is how I went through the Army for six years because I had an MOS and some of the people needed me there, so I got away with wearing a wig and working at the restaurant. So, I’d come in the restaurant at 8:00 at night from the drive from Dugway, working until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and drive back to Dugway for my morning formation for two weeks during the summer every year. Then, if it was a weekend, when we had gigs in Salt Lake or something, because 28 we used to play at the old Grogin’s and the old Terrace Ballroom and those kind of things. That’s when I’d go back and put a wig on and my hair would just slowly got longer, my hair used to be down to here back in the old days, so people would tell me, “You clean up pretty good.” I’d just go, “Well, I have to, especially if I’m teaching fair housing.” I’m teaching federal law. Some people that have taken my class before say, “Well, boy, why don’t you update your information?” How do you update a federal law and I tell them what it’s going to cost them to get sued and what the penalties are and we had five original protected classes, now we’ve got nine. It’s one of those things that if you don’t understand what they are, and the danger of fair housing discrimination is that you don’t have to intentionally do it. If you make someone feel bad—it’s just like if I was talking to you right now and I said something to you that made you feel bad, you can actually sue me in federal court and the burden of proof, I hate to say this, in America you’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, but in fair housing, the way the courts are and the history of fair housing, the real estate professional has to prove themselves innocent because as far as their concerned, you’re guilty. It’s like a sexual harassment suit, and guess who always wins on the sexual harassment suit. I hate to say that, but like I say, if a woman accuses a man of sexual harassment, it could be overreaction or it could be, “well, I just want some bucks.” Who usually gets most of the consideration? It’s usually the woman. It’s one of those things that, it doesn’t have to be intentional. That’s what is so dangerous. So, if I went to sell your house, you used the services of the real estate professional, which you 29 know I am, and let’s say that we decided that we had to lease your home with the option to purchase, and let’s say that somebody came, just got back from Vietnam, or not Vietnam, but Iraq, and said, “I’d like to rent your house, but I need you to make me a rep and widen the doors, blah, blah, blah.” “Not at my house you’re not going to.” Just the fact that you won’t allow any reasonable accommodations, they could sue you, and you know who’s going to win? The disabled person. So, part of my job is to let the realtors know, or professionals know, that sometimes I don’t agree with the way the regulations are written, but we are all subject to it. So, that’s, I guess what my purpose has been for the last, I guess the 35 years I’ve been doing real estate, but that’s what I do now. The reason that I think I made it through the white light about a year and a half ago is because I’ve seen what happened on 25th Street, I’ve seen what happened to my mom and dad being persecuted, and the thing that really gets in my craw, I have no inheritance because my grandparents, the ones that lived in Idaho Falls and the ones that live in Clinton, they were farmers and they owned acres and acres, about a thousand acres, five hundred acres apiece, I mean, I don’t know what the real numbers were. But they took it away from them because they were Japanese. So, I have no inheritance. My understanding is, and because I don’t know exactly what it was, in Idaho Falls, the ground they took away from my mom’s parents, is now the country club. The ground out in Clinton, is now a subdivision and my parents, just before my dad passed away, received $25,000 for retribution because of the fact that they were discriminated against and so, I hate to say it, the federal government said, “I’m going to give 30 you 25 grand and we’re even.” Deep down in my heart, the emotional situation and besides the monetary, there are thousands and thousands of Japanese that really got tanked on that deal. Then you take a look at the profiling they do now with Eastern Arabian, and you take a look at the profiling they had if you had German ancestry. They’re still taking people with war crimes that they’re finding had come to the United States, and yet, the Japanese, it’s kind of hard for us to hide because, “You all look the same,” and “We can pick you out.” The thing is that I think the persecution they went through—you’d think that with slavery and Abraham Lincoln that it was all done a long time ago. In 1968, the Civil Rights Act, take a look at 1968, it’s not that long ago. Our modern fair housing law, where we call it the fair housing amendments act, that added to protect the class, etc. I think it was in 1988. Anyway, we’re just getting there and still, we get discrimination like you wonder about discrimination here in the state of Utah, the anti-discrimination division actually administers the law for us. As a, what they call a FAP or a FHIP, Fair Housing Initiatives of Trials and Programs, the anti-discrimination division and insuring [inaudible], they do that, but we see about 100 cases a year at least. As a matter of fact, I think on that wall somewhere, I think it’s right behind you, they gave me a lifetime achievement from the state. That was a few years back and I’m still doing this stuff, but the thing is, we see the discrimination with persons with disabilities and families with children. We’re still seeing it and we 31 get about 100 cases a year. People don’t think it’s a big deal, so that’s what I fight for. Especially the visitability issue because people are getting older. People come up to me all the time and say, “How come they don’t have more houses?” I say, “It’s because they don’t care.” It’s all profit-motivated. Until we get somebody that’s in power that has an issue with it, will we see anything change? I hate to say that, so you might not want to put that on the record. That’s just my opinion, but I think most of the people agree with me as far as that goes. I’m trying to get the young people, the older persons that are over 50, housing with, I mean, there’s no such thing as adult communities anymore, it’s called housing for older persons. You use “adult community” and somebody that knows the law will sue you. The thing is I’d like to get the younger generation really in tune with some of the problems that we’ve got with disabilities. We’re getting more people, even mental disabilities, then we get cities that say, “No, we won’t allow a mental halfway house in this neighborhood.” Well, that’s still a disability and having a normal neighborhood is good for a lot of people, but, “Not in my neighborhood you’re not going to do it,” type of deal. So, I guess to some degree, although I lived through the restaurant and I know the discrimination my parents went through and that’s why I got involved in fair housing with the real estate and that’s why I’ve been doing fair housing since, 1979 because I watched what happened to my parents, so to sit and say that never happened, I’d be lying to you. But the thing is, I’m sure there was a lot of it that went on that my parents insulated me from. The people that come to the restaurant obviously came to the restaurant free will, so they liked the food or 32 they had a relationship like my dad had with Carlin’s father-in-law. So, I think some of the people during that time, if they were still alive, would tell you about more of that than maybe I’m aware of. But I know that I’m not completely an idiot, I did graduate from Weber, but the thing is that I know that kind of stuff went on. I remember getting teased and bullied when I was in school, but it was one of those things that, I, at least I got passed there. And then as I got older, they found out that I had a little more scruples than some of the guys I used to run around with. So, I had the big tough guys, they would have me start the fights and then they would come and, “what are you doing picking on my little buddy here?” Because I would help them with their homework. So, this is junior high school and it’s one of those that, I started thinking about some of the things that I’ve gone through. I took Evelyn Wood’s Speed Reading. You remember Evelyn Woods, do you remember hearing that? You look at a page and you take your hand and scan yourself down. I took that when I was in high school and I was, for about a month, I thought, “man, there are other—you can’t do this stuff, this is…” They said, “Just keep practicing and keep practicing and have faith.” He said, ‘Pretty soon you’ll be able to see the words, not read them, but see the words and it will jump out at you.” I said, ‘Yeah right,” but I did the drills, trying to be disciplined and all of a sudden, one day, I was doing that and the words started jumping off the page. “The Old Man at Sea,” wasn’t required reading back when I was a kid, but that was one of the books that they gave us there and I read it in like eight and a half minutes and had like 27,000 word comprehension, I mean, words per minute with like 97 percent comprehension. I told some of my old 33 friends back in those days in the band, and they said, “Oh yeah right. You had too many drugs. Are you nuts. You can’t do that.” So, one of them actually went back and called Evelyn Wood and I think we were in Georgia and told him how to spell my name. He said, “Oh, he’s one of my national record holders.” The next time I’d seen this guy, he brought me a case of beer and he said, “God, I’ll never doubt you again.” But the thing was, I would spend 30 minutes a week doing my homework and still pull A’s. So I used to go out in the parking lot and smoke, which wasn’t good for my heart and that’s why people would always wonder. I played in a rock and roll band, I’m partying all the time, I must be cheating because I’m getting straight A’s. No, I mean, I could walk in and have already read the book and I’ll take a test in 30 minutes and walk out. I was wondering why all of the girls used to sit around me and I found this out at one of my class reunions. Robin Scott, one of the real estate brokers in town, I bought her old house, but she was telling me that the girls used to sit around me because they would like look at my paper and they would pass the answers around. I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” She says, “No.” I said, “I thought it was because you guys wanted me.” That’s what I went through when I was a kid, so that’s why, like I say, my perception of the way things are may be a little bit different, but them are some of the things that I can remember. But then I’ll, since you just asked me that questions, I’ll go home tonight and all of a sudden I’ll just, I’ll remember other things. LR: Right. That’s always the way it works. 34 MR: But I do, I remember the Native Americans, I mean, that’s what sticks in my head. Just a whole slug of people coming up from the Union Station. They’d get up on this side of our building, then they all turn into the parking lot there and there used to be a great big tree and they would go back there and throw their tents during the summer time and in the winter time, I don’t know how they did it. I remember, I remember that sight of watching them and then watching out the window and watching all the police. My friend, old Bob Bentley, when he was with OPD that’s the golf professional up at Bear Lake West now, I remembered just all the red lights and the cops on the corner because there used to be the El Borracho and Pancho’s with all the stabbings going on there and shootings and it was one of those things—it was quite colorful. I used to, I mean, I probably watched I don’t know how many crimes go down. Then, in the daytime, I would get on my trike and ride up and down the street because that’s when we had a lot of the Japanese businesses that were on 25th Street. Roy Nakitana had an electronics shop, Yuke’s Café used to be across the street. Marino Tolatas, his dad owned the bar right across the street and Marino’s dad and my dad were friends. George Floor, who also is licensed in this office, that had the sand trap, his dad, Gus, before he got killed in the plane crash in West Ogden—there was a plane that went down and hit the tree—but they were good friends. He’d come in and he liked his steaks well-done, so he’d come in the kitchen and pick out a steak and tell Dad just to wrap it up and he’ll be back in a few weeks and he just liked that thing 35 aged and he said, “Just scrape the crap off and cook it well-done for me.” That was one of the things that I remember when I was a kid, him coming in. Then, I remember all the police officers, we always had police officers in the restaurant, always. Highway Patrol, Weber County, OPD, and as a matter of fact, Phil Howe, Lieutenant Howe, he used to the work with OPD, he just passed away from cancer, but his now wife, she worked for us when she was 16, down at the restaurant. That’s where he met his wife and, like I say, that’s how I kind of got involved in the Weber County Sherriff’s Department, so but anyway, I just remember all the police officers and the vice. But yeah, I just met somebody up in Bear Lake just this last weekend when I was up there for a golf tournament. Wallace Petcock, he works for security at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas right now. But when he was sitting across from me he kept on hearing my name and he said, “Well, did you have the Star Noodle?” And then he remembered the band and he remembered that he was in the same Reserve unit as I was, so we went back down memory lane just this weekend. So, that’s what kind of made me remember some things because he asked me about it and said, “Boy, I miss that breaded veal and I miss that salad. You’re just making me hungry.” But that’s what I can remember, I mean, if you directed certain questions it would probably stir my memory, but that’s the way it was. You know, but then, it’s been over 65 years that I can remember. Carl could probably—he a year older than I am or two years older than I am, could tell you more of the situation with the Star noodle sign as far as that 36 goes. Now, the building has been sold, but it’s just sitting there. I mean, the building needed a lot of work and when they gutted it they took out any potential that it had in it. The kitchen needed to be updated and people ask me, “Have you thought about opening the restaurant back up again?” And, that only flashed in my mind a few times and not very long because it’s a lot of hard work. You live there you’ve got to live it and then you leave it for other people to run. We had a quality control, everything we did, and you can put this in there, everything that we did at the restaurant was fresh. It was all made to order. There were only a few things that we would prepare ahead of time, but that was for one or two day inventory purposes. Other than that, everything else was fresh, made when you ordered it. Like our salads, it was put together the second we got the order. We had the lettuce chopped up, but they were in large vats and were refrigerated. We’d go through five, ten of those vats a night. It was different, and then all the things that we had to do, the food prep, for stuff that went into it—boil the eggs, peel the eggs, cut the eggs, do the celery, do the radishes—just all the things that we had to do. That was just for the salad. LR: Well, I almost wish we had a little bit more time. LR: Let me ask this one quick question. Knowing that there was the red light district, you were kind of close to it there, did you ever get any of the prostitutes coming in and did you know that they were coming in? MR: Uh, no. I think they probably came in to eat, then they’d hit the street and leave, but they would never solicit there or anything as far as I could see because we had such a police presence. I mean, usually, any time during the day, there 37 wouldn’t be maybe 30 minutes in which there wasn’t an officer that was on their lunch break. We’d have Weber County, Highway Patrol, OPD and even some from other jurisdictions that were coming east, so there was always cops there. And they would really eliminate a lot of it. We used to have people that tried to walk out, if you know what I mean, have something to eat and then try to hit the door. There were many times where they would be running out and there’d be cops coming in to eat and say, ‘Het, that guy just ran out.” They’d turn around and arrest his butt. He’s like, “Are you going to take up my lunch?” I remember that, and my dad, because we knew that cops didn’t get paid much, he gave all the cops, there was always a discount for cops, so that was kind of the motivation, but for my dad to have that presence there. It kept a lot of riff-raff as far as that goes and knock on wood, as far as I remember, in all the years that we were there, we never got robbed or anything because of the police presence.. Now, we had our neighbors next door that were Japanese and somebody came in and killed—I think it was Mr. Noi, I guess hit him over the head and he was elderly, so he passed. That’s when we ended up buying the building because they shut down. After that, I used to, when my office was in the front, Lakewood Realtors used to be there, and right there was where the counter was and I always would sit there and think, “Can I feel a spirit or not?” Because that’s where he passed away. That’s the only thing I remember of anything bad happening in the restaurant. LR: So it was really smart of your dad to have that presence there. 38 MR: Well, yeah, like I said, “Well, how come you do that?” He says, “We need them there.” Since it was the red light district, you might say, a high crime, I mean, would you do something in a place where there was all the cops? Or if somebody started trouble, all of a sudden you see five or six guys that were cops that were either undercover or uniformed, get up and start cuffing people, so it was kind of nice. They’d come in and eat and that’s what it was, so we just fed them. LR: That’s great. Thank you, I appreciate you answering that and for taking the time and answering our questions and talking about 25th Street and just the diversity of this was fantastic.