The Ys are
native Californians and they arrived in their neighborhood after
growing up in San Diego and living in three other California cities
as Mr. Y moved upward in the grocery business. Mrs. Y was born in
1934, close to the bottom of the Depression. Her father was a
carpenter who did a number of other things as well. "He never did
go on welfare," Mrs. Y said, proudly. She remembers that he had a
little black Ford with a rumble seat in which he carried his
carpenter's tool box. San Diego was then a small, cohesive city.
She went to her neighborhood grammar school but when she reached
high school she had to take the bus since there were only three
high schools in San Diego and none of them near her house. "I took
the bus because they'd already ripped out the street cars since
they were too convenient," she said wryly. She was able to go to
San Diego State College, a public institution where tuition
payments were very small. There she met Vernon, who was majoring in
journalism.
Vernon Y had
been born as poor as Nora but his background had an exotic edge.
His father had grown up in Shanghai, where Vernon's grandfather had
a laundry business and his great-grandfather was an executive with
the Dupont Company. His great-grandmother, a white Russian
emigré, was a physician.
Vernon's
father's childhood home was overrun with servants and languages; he
learned, in lesser or greater degree, to speak Chinese, French,
Russian, and English. Vernon's father was stationed in San
Francisco and San Diego while serving in the Marine Corps. By the
time his enlistment was up the Depression had arrived. He joined
the San Diego Police Department where he remained, a patrolman, for
25 years.
In Vernon's
own childhood home there was no money to spare. He began his
working life as a teenager as a box boy at a grocery, a choice
which shaped his future. When "the most fancy market San Diego had
ever seen" opened, he got a job there and began moving up, to
checker, to stock clerk, to receiving clerk. He kept his job after
enrolling at San Diego State. He also bought a secondhand
Studebaker and met Nora. They were children of their time; World
War II was just over, the Korean War was about to begin, and the
Depression was still vivid in their minds. They were determined to
live better than their parents had, and they often talked about how
they could get ahead.
"I remember
one day Vernon took me out to the edge of town to look at some
hills out there. He said land there would be a good investment,
that it would be developed. He said he'd like to do it and he went
down to city hall and they told him that the land was all public
land and it couldn't be touched. Later we drove by and it was being
developed. They had lied to him."
Vernon knew
he'd soon be drafted and he wanted to get married. "Vernon wouldn't
marry until we had a place of our own so we pooled our money. I had
$1,000 and we bought a garage on a remote acre of land, halfway
down a mountain. He quit school and we got married in December. He
was