ORAL HISTORY PROJECT OF THE MARIN COUNTY FREE LIBRARY Anne T. Kent California Room Original recording available at the Anne T. Kent California Room © All materials copyright Marin County Free Library. Transcript made available for research purposes only. All rights are reserved to the Marin County Free Library. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the: Anne T. Kent California Room Marin County Free Library 3501 Civic Center Dr. #427 San Rafael, California, 94903

---

INTERVIEW WITH ROGER KENT
by Carla Ehat & Anne Kent
February 15, l978

INTERVIEWEE: Roger Kent (RK)
INTERVIEWERS: Carla Ehat (CE) and Anne Kent (AK)
DATE OF INTERVIEW: February 15, l978
TRANSCRIBER: Marjorie Hoffman



CE: Today is Wednesday, February 15, l978 and we have the pleasure of being at the residence this morning of Roger Kent at 200 Woodland in Kentfield, California.

Roger Kent, born June 8, l906 in Chicago, is the youngest son of William Kent, who is famous in California as the avid conservationist and congressman. He contributed many things; I suppose, Roger, his creation of the National Park Service is one of his outstanding achievements. He also gave Muir Woods to the nation, and as I remember interviewing some other members of your family, particularly your brother, Sherman, he seems to have been a man who fought all of his life for the conservation of land and its products and the public control of water and also public ownership of water power. You've had an interesting life as a lawyer, Roger, and your political involvement in the Democratic Party. Tell us a little about the early beginnings here.

RK: First can I add a couple of things about the old man?

CE: Yes, please.

RK: Among other things was that he and about two or three other men were the founders and supporters of the Save the Redwood League. And Newton Drury, who is about 94 now and just retiring, has given me the facts and figures, I mean, the budget would show that the Save the Redwoods League in 1920 or whatever it was had expenses of $1,900 and William Kent put up $750 and somebody else put up $300 and somebody else put up this, and that's the way that was started. Then there were three books written, the University of California, about those early days here when my father was so prominent and one was Boss Ruef's San Francisco by Walton Bean, another one was The California Progressives and the name of the man who wrote it slips me now, but I remember. In 54 I went to a meeting given by Justice Carter of the Supreme Court. The father of Oliver Carter was the Federal Judge here. This gentleman's name, whom I'm ashamed to say slips me now, had been Attorney General and who had run against Earl Warren and who was a very well-known and prominent and considered very radical democrat, he told me at that meeting if he asked me if I had read this book on the California Progressives and I said no, I hadn't and he said, "Well, you'd better get it and read it because," he said, "your father comes out better than any of them." And, what happened, apparently, with those California Progressives and those exactly the things that you had was that he wanted the public land for the use of the public and he wanted, if it was developed and electricity was produced, why, it was to be for the benefit of the public and, of course, he and Rudolph Spreckels and these other people were all for honest government and that's why they were involved in the cleaning up the Abe Reuf scandal and things of that kind. But this fellow in that book and other people have repeated it, that the first one to see the economic barrier to fairness in the country was my father, of this radical group. But he realized, of course, it fruited these people little if they got these particular advantages of public land and public power if they weren't able to buy food and he was among the first to see that there had to be quite drastic changes in the economic structure of the country in order to make it a good country for everybody.

CE: Well, I noticed in reading the biography your mother wrote, in the introduction are many attributes and many accolades to your father and one is by, I guess it was a quote from the Municipal Voters League in his memory and they said, "He never struck an unfair blow and his sincerity and simplicity brought him the admiration and liking even of those he denounced.

RK: There were these two amiable crooks in Chicago, "Bath House John" and I've forgotten the other fellow's name and one of them remarked, he said to one of my brothers, "Your father was the only honest reformer I ever knew." Inky Dink was the other man. Bath House John and Inky Dink.

CE: Well, would you agree, the Merchants' Club in Chicago in l928 said this about him, "He was an original thinker and strong in his convictions and his whole life was a continual fighter for what he thought was right, even if it brought him in opposition to his own interest and to his associates."

RK: Felix Frankfurter in his book was kind enough to make the same kind of remark, he said, "William Kent was an original," and then when I say he was kind enough to say, "as are his sons."

CE: Good. Also somebody, I think his daughter-in-law, said, "Will is fine, as fine as silk and sensitive," but the Reverend Dr. William Guthrie, Presbyterian Minister in San Francisco and Marin County said in his Scotch way, "Well, don't let it be too smooth, Will was rough." I suppose he was a man of He's been called kind of that lonely crag, which seems severe. Was he a man that had time to himself, needed time to himself, kept himself apart?

RK: I think so. I was very unfortunate in coming along so late, that being the seventh child and both dad and mother having become involved in many, many things. I didn't see as much of either of them and certainly not as much of my father as the older people, so I didn't know him. I only went on about, oh, two or three trips with him as a boy.

CE: What kind of a trip would that be, Roger?

RK: Camping trips, I was thinking.

CE: Where did you go?

RK: Oh, back of Tahoe, for one. We were going to go on a glorious one up the Klamath River and he got sick and couldn't go. He also took me, when I was a kid, with mother, down to Florida during the session of congress and we went fishing and hunting down there.

CE: He was supposed to have been quite a hunter?

RK: Oh, fantastic and what I will make available certainly, in mother's book there is either one chapter or a series of excerpts of shooting stories and somebody at the Thacher School excerpted these shooting stories from mother's book and they have published as kind of a brochure kind of thing under the name "Shooting Stories." So, what I started doing here in this damn blindness, macular degeneration, I started using the Dictaphone and I thought, well, a good place to start would be to continue my knowledge of "Shooting Stories."

CE: Add to your mother's?

RK: Just attach this as an appendix to this one and send it down to Thacher and make it available to my children and grandchildren and so forth. And, told things that my father had told me about his shooting and then also about the experiences that I had had with him on one or more of these trips and around here in Kentfield and what he did. And I talked to my brother, Sherman, and he's coming out again pretty quick and we thought we would hit both that and we would hit fishing stories. Anne, one of the fishing stories I started in on, of course, was our Pyramid Lake trips.

AK: Isn't that something?

RK: Which were just utterly fantastic.

CE: Well, you were born in 1906, so when your father was in Congress you were what? Six years old?

RK: Well, no let's see. I was four.

CE: Four. That's right, because he was in Congress in 1910.

RK: Well, you see he stayed there. He was in Congress in 1904, 1910, 12 and 14 and through the period of 16. So he was not there for the war vote. He always used to remember him saying, he said he just didn't know what he would have done. He had been so fond of the German people back when as a boy going through the country fishing and what-not and he just couldn't believe these awful stories about the people, he was coming to believe them, but he was spared that agony of

CE: Having to vote.

RK: On that. Then he was appointed of course on the Tariff Commission because one of the great causes of the liberals in the, at that period was the inordinately high tariff that was clamped on and bit the farmer and the working man, for the benefit of the industrialist and to knock down the tariff was an aim that would give them a more equal break economically. Of course, the country decided to go a different way, it decided to give the farmer a subsidy rather than cut down the subsidy that had been given to the industrialist. But that was one of the ideals of the liberals at that time and he welcomed the appointment by Wilson to that Tariff Commission. At that time they had a policy in Congress, or maybe it was even by law, I guess it was by law, that on these independent agencies there should be two Republicans, two Democrats, and an Independent. Well, it certainly would be hard put to find an Independent and I guess my father would have been perhaps one of the few guys that was a genuine Independent, that was elected as an Independent, and considered himself as such and so was eminently eligible to be the Independent member of the Tariff Commission and in a subject that interested him a great deal. However, he was quite disappointed in the manner in which the Tariff Commission conducted its business and with the continued influence of the lobbyists for industry, in the Congress, I mean. Senator Bingham was censured for allowing a lobbyist for the Connecticut Manufacturer's Association to participate in the hearings in the Senate Committee that was looking into the tariffs. So, I was in Washington from 1910 to 1919, I guess it was. I came out here and went from the seventh grade in the Friends School in Washington which was

CE: Is that where you went to school first?

RK: Yes. Well, first I went to the Potomac School which was a girls' school and they allowed men in that school through the second grade. Then I went from there to the Friends School, which was a Quaker School and a very good school. I was in the seventh grade there when the family moved out here and I went right from here to first year in Tamalpais High School, which was a very poor high school at that time.

CE: You didn't go to the local elementary school?

RK: I didn't go to a local elementary school. As a matter of fact what happened was that I had gone, because at that time being a Congressman was a rather gentlemanly occupation and you stayed home until practically Christmas and so I did and at that time I would go when I was in the lower grades. I went to the local Kentfield School and then would move to Washington and either go to either Potomac or Friends, I guess Friends. Then when we came out here permanently.

CE: What year was that Roger? When the family relocated?

RK: Let's see, 1907 was when the family moved permanently from Chicago out here.

CE: I see, but you mean when you

RK: When we came back from Washington. That would have been It was either 1919 or 1920. I would have been

AK: I think it was about 1919, you were about twelve years old.

RK: Anne, I think I would have been in the Class of 1923; I'm sure I would have been at Tamalpais High School, so that would make it 1920 wouldn't it? No, it would be 1919.

CE: And what was wrong with Tam High School then?

RK: Well, I guess it was probably symptomatic of public education throughout California at that time. The standards were very, very low. I took the, I guess the second year that I was there I took three college board examinations. That was at a time when you took college board examinations and you had to get 15 credits. I took French, Algebra and Biology and I got 23 in French and 24 in Algebra and 60 in Biology and I don't think I ever flunked another exam in my life.

CE: So then what was the decision made, you would go elsewhere?

RK: Well, I think I was the last one, the last bird to get shoved out of the nest, and they kind of liked to have him around and so I did not go to Thacher as early as the other boys had gone, which, of course, was my mother's brothers Ronnie and I guess Albert went there, the oldest went there for the full five years.

CE: But you did go there

RK: I went there the last three years and graduated from there in fact in three years because I'd gotten such a miserable education at Tamalpais at that time.

CE: What turned you in the direction of law, Roger? Was that something that you thought about at Thacher, or later on when you went to Yale?

RK: It interested me. I was very good in American History and

CE: You enjoyed history.

RK: I enjoyed that very much. My greatest scholastic achievement was when I The Professor of American History at Thacher posted the marks of an examination on the board one time and he felt called upon to stand up and explain why he had given a student a mark of 100 in an examination.

CE: And you got it.

RK: And he said, "The only reason I did it, I read each question," he said, "each one." And he said, "Obviously, I could have given him less, but," he said, "each one was about as good as I could expect from a student of this class." So I was very much interested in that and very much interested in the aspect of law, and I took some history at Yale and I was very much interested in Ancient History at Thacher and at Yale, too.

CE: Yale of course was the family school; all the Kent 's had more or less attended Yale.

RK: Yes, I was the fifth of the brothers.

CE: And your father and grandfather

RK: My father had gone and my grandfather and mother's father had been dean of the Latin department at Yale.

CE: Isn't that how your parents met?

RK: Yes, yes.

CE: Would you mind telling that little vignette?

RK: I don't know it completely, I was told about it elsewhere. My father was out here and he was being tutored out here and then it was decided that he was going to go to Yale and then he should get some advanced tutoring at Yale and somehow or another the idea would be that he would board with the Thachers and be tutored there before he went to Yale and he became a close friend of the Thachers. A kind of funny kind of combination because they were very, very Victorian, not at all interested in shooting or hunting or swearing or drinking or And the old man became a fast member of the family and married the only girl of the family. I think, what was it, eight or nine brothers, Anne?

AK: Eight I guess.

RK: Eight brothers, yes, and she was the only girl.

CE: Okay, so you went to Did you go to Yale with some enthusiasm Roger?

RK: Oh, yes. You see Sherman was there. I was kind of lucky that way in that when I went to Thacher, Sherman was there.

CE: He was just about three years

RK: Two and a half years older than I and he was two years ahead at Thatcher and he and I, with another guy, had a shack together and we did a lot of riding together and shooting together. Then when I went to Yale he was a junior. We were always very close. So, I was very happy to go there and a good bunch of my best friends at Thacher went to Yale.

CE: So it was just transferring to the East and continuing your education with some of your childhood

RK: Yes, I was very fortunate there that I had, that two of the boys who had been at Thacher, one of them, Phil Barney, lived in Farmington and another one was Horace Learned who actually roomed with another guy and I in our freshman year and his mother was a Cheney from South Manchester. So we had these lovely country places in New England that we went to, with these wonderful people, families.

CE: For weekends and holidays?

RK: Well, yes. Usually on holidays, if it was Christmas, we usually came out here even though it was eight days on the train, coming and going, or something like it. Easter we often times went south. I remember one Christmas I stayed east and went up into New Hampshire and got a breath of some real cold weather and snow and ice and so forth.

CE: Were there any professors there that were outstanding that you would name for us?

RK: Oh, yes, oh, yes, there were a number of them. There was Professor Burdan, Professor Chauncey Tinker: these were English professors. And French with another English guy. I took one course which was called The Hellenistic Age, I've forgotten what it was, and it was taught by, or close to it anyway And Rostovsteff was an eminent Russian scholar. He had moved over to the United States and one day we came to class, and he was a barrel of a man, he was just your idea of a Russian. He must have weighed about 280 pounds and he was as strong and, and he was just round. He had a mustache, a little mustache, and he pounded himself on his barrel chest and he said, "I am one of the 52 immortals of the world." He had just been elected to the French Academy and there were 40 French and 12 foreigners and so naturally he was very pleased with that. Well, that was a very, very fascinating course. There was a wonderful guy that taught physics there my freshman year but Then Seymour, who later became President of Yale, was going to teach a course that I had signed up for and I think we just got a little tiny bit of it and then something happened and he got appointed Provost of Yale and eventually President so I didn't have him as a teacher but I later came to know him quite well because he became a very good friend of Sherman's. I'll never forget one extraordinary thing about Seymour was that when we had this house over here across the way Seymour was staying with us, he was in our guest house, and I went over and woke him up with news that Germany had invaded Russia . It was quite a day in our world's history, and a very fateful one.

CE: What year did you graduate?

RK: 28.

CE: 28.

RK: And then I went to law school and graduated in 31.

CE: That was the year your father died wasn't it?

RK: 28 was the year dad died, yes.

CE: Did you come by train again, long

RK: Oh, sure, oh, sure.

CE: I mean, there was no quicker way to come was there?

RK: No, no, no. We didn't take an airplane until well, my little boy got very, very sick and I was in the east and flew back and had a hell of a time. Got into Reno and couldn't get any further and go in a bus and got bogged down in Soda Springs and finally got through. We finally got transferred to a train there. But, later on when I was I came out here and I practiced law with a big firm and then I went to the SEC as an attorney in the San Francisco office and at that time I flew across the continent several times in the old DC3's.

CE: When you came to practice law, when you got your degree, you said you were with a firm. What was the name of that firm?

RK: Chickering and Gregory.

CE: Oh, yes, and then you went with the SEC?

RK: I stayed with Chickering and Gregory for about five years and then I went

CE: Was it general law, general practice?

RK: Yes, yes, yes. Then

CE: That was sort of your apprentice years, then?

RK: That was I graduated in 31 and Alice and I went out to the islands for our last big trip in the summer of 31, because they weren't going to pay me anything. I mean, those were the days when you couldn't get You were just lucky to get a place to work. So, I came back out and didn't take the bar exams until February of '32, and so I was admitted to practice in 32 and then I just hung up my hat here in the end of August of this year, of 77.

CE: We should go, really, into a discussion sometime of just your law practice.

RK: Oh, no, no, no.

CE: To the extent that I imagine you have seen many changes since you took the bar in '32, in test cases and what not.

RK: Oh, yes. Well, just quickly, of course, I had five years with Chickering and Gregory and in general law practice, a business law firm, and I had nearly five years as an SEC lawyer in which I was to a considerable extent doing enforcement work in security frauds and violations and so forth. Then I was in the Navy from 42 to 45 as a Lieutenant and Lieutenant Commander and I was in that time. At that time I was really just lucky to be in related stuff; I was an Air Combat Intelligence Officer and was out in the Pacific on carriers and on Guadalcanal and on seaplane tenders and what not, and during the last year of the war in Washington as assistant to the air plans officer on the Commander in Chief's staff, which was an interesting and important job. Then I came back and we started our own law firm and went along with that for a few years and then in 48 Clarence Lee, who had succeeded my father in Congress, retired and after they tried to get everybody else in the district to run some of the guys came around and got me to run and I ran. I had the interesting experience of getting the most votes in the primary in the old cross filing days and no nomination. Then I ran again and that was a very bad year, it was 50, when Jimmy Roosevelt lost to Warren by about 60,000 votes and Helen Douglas lost to Nixon by about 50,000 votes in this district and I lost by about ten. But, anyway, shortly after that I was back east and one of Sherman's friends said that the guy who was the Assistant Secretary of the Defense Department, legal and legislative, wanted to get a general counsel and so I didn't go over. He said he'd send me over. So, I said, it didn't make any sense. I told him the next day I didn't go over. I said, this doesn't make any sense. I said, "I've got some commitments in California and I don't know anything about this," and he said, "Well, you'll never waste your time talking to a guy as good as this." So I went over and talked to him. When I came back I told Sherman, I said, "I told the guy that I did have some commitments in California and besides that I had never run a big law office and I didn't know one thing about the rules and regulations," and Sherman laughed and said, "If you had wanted the job you couldn't have told him anything better." He said, "The ones they're wary of are the smart ass that comes in and is going to fix everything up!" So, first they said, "Well we've offered it to somebody else and he didn't know if he could take it or not," and he said, "we'll stick with him if he can take it, but if he can't take it, why, we'll bid you." So I went back there and saw Clair Engle who was in Congress at the time, he became a very fine friend of mine, and I said, "Well, they're bidding this job of general counsel of defense." "God," he said, "you must have concealed your politics," he said, "there aren't any other Democrats over there. Lovett's the Secretary of Defense and he's a Republican, Bill Foster's the Deputy Secretary of Defense, he's a Republican, this guy that's hiring you, Charles Coolidge, who's a wonderful man from Boston," head of one of the leading firms up there and later Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Harvard and a remarkable fellow. So I went to work there.

CE: What year was that, about?

RK: That was early in 52.

CE: You went in 52 and how long did you stay with that?

RK: Well, I stayed until May of 53. I was in the secretary's dining room when the election results of 52 were announced and I said, "Well, good-bye, boys," and they said, "Are you an admitted Democrat?" And I said, "Am I!" I said, "I will be leaving." So the, that, of course, is awful rough, that change of administration on the relatively young people with children in school in January, so I talked to Coolidge and then to Lovett and I said, "I'd like to stay on and help the guy choose my successor and help break him in and stay a few months because I've got kids in school." He said, "Sure, that's a perfectly dignified position," he said, "I'll talk to my successor." So he did, and they kept me on. They asked me, "How long would you like to stay?" And I said, "First of May," and they said, "Fine, great, stay on till then." So I did, and I did a lot of work and helped them I think, with my successor. Then came back to California and shortly after that, at the end of 54 they came around to me, they had a hell of a time finding a Democrat to run for Governor against him. Well, at first they thought it was going to be Warren and then Warren got appointed to the Supreme Court and then it became a very different ballgame and the guy was going to run against Knight. So they didn't find anybody for quite a while and finally they got Dick Graves, who was a very, very competent guy. He was the Executive Secretary of the League of California Cities. He asked me to be his Northern California Chairman. I'm sure he did that at the suggestion of George Miller, who I had known and who was a Senator and what-not and I said, "Look, I like you and I'll be in your campaign anywhere," and he said, "Well, I'd like to have you there," so I said, "Okay." So we started in to put together what we could with no money. Then came a question of being an officer of the Democratic Party and somebody suggested that I run for the office of Vice Chairman for the Democratic Party, which was then open, which was Chairman of Northern California. I said, "Well, just leave it to Dick Graves. What does he want? Does he want me to continue to be his Northern California Chairman, or does he want me to run for this job?" So, he finally decided he wanted me to run for the job, so I ran for it and was elected. I had opposition at the election and never had opposition again, when I ran for State Chairman or and then back to Vice Chairman and then up to State Chairman and back to Vice Chairman. So I had a most interesting political career and one of the things that was most interesting about it and this comes to this house and that is that of these years a great many were the years of Eisenhower's presidency when there were a great many Democratic senators and others, governors and what-not, who were hopeful of running and one of the prizes, of course, was California. So they were coming out here for big parties, small parties, medium size parties, traveling and all the rest of it.

CE: And you were the host?

RK: Yes, at many of them. We have the Stevenson room upstairs and Hubert Humphrey was here two or three nights, Ed Muskie was here, and I don't know just a whole dozen of them or more of the prominent ones. Then, of course, I also was host in introducing them at various dinners in San Francisco and around throughout the state, so I did get an opportunity to meet a great bunch of people.

CE: May I interrupt you, Roger, for a moment? What was your impression of Hubert Humphrey?

RK: Oh, I was absolutely crazy about him. He There were people who said he was too glib, just didn't have the knowledge to understand there just never was a man whose brain was more closely connected to his tongue than Hubert Humphrey! He just I spoke to him one time, I said, "Hubert, you're being criticized. You know I like you just the way you are, but you're being criticized for being glib." He said, "I know it, I know it. I'm trying to slow down, but I can't really see the sense when somebody asks me a question and I know the answer of acting as if I had to give it a lot of thought before I gave the answer."

AK: Tell the story about somebody in the book about "how can he be so glib?"

RK: Oh, Stevenson said this, Stevenson says, "How in the hell did Hubert get to know so much?" he says. "Nobody ever heard him listen and he never has time to read."

CE: Well, it was The tributes that were paid to him at his services were wonderful. He really won out in the end didn't he? He won out.

RK: Yes, yes.

AK: As a man.

CE: As a man. How do you feel about his wife succeeding?

RK: I think just great. She is really a wonderfully high class woman and she's got a lot of brains and she has lived with this guy and absorbed

CE: And knows his philosophy?

RK: Knows his philosophy tremendously. One time I got one of these telephone calls that you've got to get used to in politics. We were going to have about 700 people at the Fairmont for lunch. It was not a fund raiser; it was just the cost of the lunch. It was just to build a little enthusiasm, and Humphrey was coming down from Portland and he was going to speak. So Rollin Post got me on the telephone and he said, "Roger, what are you going to now? Humphrey is flying east to Washington to vote on this matter." I said, "Thanks, Rollin, I haven't any idea." So the next day they came in and we had some stand-ins we were going to use and when they came in they said, "Well, Muriel has been working on a speech all the way down from Portland with this guy from Time and they've got a hell of a good speech." That's it. So we put her on and she made just a great speech, and a big hit, and with poise and ability and very, very trenchant, sensible points.

CE: Well, they had a close marriage and relationship and she was certainly aware of everything. It puts me in mind, there's recently been published a dual autobiography by Ariel and Will Durant, who wrote The Story of Civilization. Will started it, but the last four books, she did so much research for him. She got so involved in it, and he was getting older and tired and he let her take some of the responsibility and he gave her a credit on the book and she really became quite a historian through her efforts and research living with him for 55 years or more. I think that's very understandable, because I've heard some people criticize, that just because Mr. Humphrey was senator, why, what does that do? They don't understand the closeness in life, do they? They're inseparable.

AK: Well, look at Eleanor and Franklin, for goodness sake.

CE: Oh, yes, of course.

AK: Oh, I think what every woman knows of that claim that a husband's really no good at all as soon as the wife leaves.

CE: One time we had the pleasure of talking, Roger, at a reception at Dominic's for William Roth, I think it was, and we were talking in retrospect about Nixon and his efforts to win the gubernatorial seat in California and you said something very interesting, I wonder if you recall it. About, after he lost that battle you thought that his political career was finished. Would you mind recapping that again? What had Nixon done that was so wrong? I forget. Was it to create some pamphlets and pass them out over the signature of

RK: Yes, that was a fraud that I had a major part of exposing and then beating him over the head with it.

CE: Well, what had he done?

RK: Well, it was the old Communist smear and it was dressed up in a particularly fraudulent manner this time because it purported to be a message from Democrats to Democrats saying, "We regretfully decide that we cannot support Brown because he is supported by the CDC, the California Democratic Council, and the CDC has people in it who have advocated the recognition of Red China permitting subversives to speak on the campus," you know, half a dozen of the old shopping list of the crap that they were saying was indicative of a communist sympathizer. And, "This is not a partisan appeal; we're not arguing that you should vote for Nixon. We just say that the only way we can regain control of our party is by throwing Brown out and by throwing these other guys out." Well, it turned out to be an absolute total fraud that had been perpetrated by Nixon, aided by Haldeman, who was his manager, and the stuff was written by Leone Baxter, the old Whitaker and Baxter group, and they would put out these releases that would say, "We are asked if we are getting any Republican money and, yes, we have received some Republican money and we'll receive money from anybody that will help us get rid of this incubus," and so forth and so on. Well, as a matter of fact, they sent out a half a million of these postcards asking for money from Democrats and they got in $387.40, is what they got from Democrats, and they got $90,000 from the Nixon campaign committee. Well, we charged this, we weren't able to prove it until quite a while later.

CE: You mean after the election?

RK: After the election. And I stayed with it and we charged it because we were absolutely sure that this is what had happened and the people became sure of it, too. So that was one of the reasons Nixon got clobbered. But, of course, one of the reasons that I probably said that Nixon was done politically, in which I couldn't have been more wrong, was that statements that he made on the morning after the election, when he'd been up all night and was drunk and told the reporters that they wouldn't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore and so forth and so on and he'd just been so ugly and sly and that was shown The television guys didn't like him and that television shot was shown up and down California for about two or three days and it didn't look like Nixon was going to be able to recover from it, but then he pulled himself together and he just started out to go around

CE: To what do you attribute his ability to overcome that and continue as he did and achieve the position he did?

RK: Well, it's He's been commented on by many, many people. He just followed the course that has to be followed. He still was a big name. He then started on the campaign trail and if anybody asked him in Flagstaff, Arizona, or Kennebunkport, Maine, or South Dakota to come and address 55 Democrats, he'd go and help them raise money and he'd go anywhere and everywhere and each of these times is where you go and you start lining up your delegates because they owe you something and you've got a lot of chips that when it comes time for a convention, you go around and pick up.

AK: Also tell Carla about the fact that, that postcard, all the names on it were the same. He had this enormous organization already started, with Haldeman and all of them were in there.

RK: Oh, yes. You see, this was I tried

CE: He carried his tribe right with him to the White House.

RK: I tried to get McGovern to use this in his campaign against Nixon and I've got this I've got a copy of this decree that we had and then a copy of And then we had all the exhibits that showed what the organization of the Nixon campaign was. And, if you can believe it, in '62, it was Nixon the candidate, Haldeman, campaign manager for the state, Ehrlichman, campaign manager for Los Angeles, this guy Morris Stans was his treasurer, Klein, Herbert Klein, was his press guy. He even had Ziegler and Chapin, who were just out of school, in there. It was the same crew that perpetrated the Watergate fraud and lies.

CE: And he took the whole bunch with him.

RK: He took the whole bunch with him and then he'd say, "Well, I trusted my staff to handle this thing correctly and I didn't pay any attention to it and I was so busy on international affairs and so forth," and of course nothing could be more absurd than this because here was this same bunch of guys that had been found by the judge to be guilty of this arrant fraud. They were the same guys that he said, "I counted on these guys not to do anything wrong."

CE: And in the end he tried to save himself, didn't he?

RK: Yes. I wonder now, I understand, I'm certainly not going to buy Mr. Haldeman's book because I wouldn't put that much money in his pocket, but I understand that he says in his book, which was just published, that Nixon personally erased that eighteen minutes off the tape. I want to find out when the library gets that book and I'll borrow it.

CE: It's probably in now; we'll get it for you. Xerox that page!

Alice: I don't know how much you've talked about, but have you talked about this place at all?

RK: No, damnit!

CE: No, were going to get back to the house. I'd like to say for the record, we're in Roger Kent's study, which intrigues me. It's in the southwest corner of this wonderful old house that was built when, Roger?

RK: Well, Anne, it was built in We cheated when we said it was built in 19

AK: Well, we said 1870. We say it started in 70.

RK: Yes.

CE: Well, it has a fireplace in it and it's got a wall safe that is a beauty.

AK: Well, this is 1915 change, though.

Alice: This is A. E's old

CE: This room?

AK: Not exactly.

Alice: It was a corner room, wasn't it?

AK: Yes. Not exactly

CE: Is that right?

AK: There was one here. There was one built.

Alice: That was already his office.

CE: Let's talk about the house for a minute.

RK: And then it was my father's office after that.

CE: Let's bring your father into it and your mother, for a moment. Now, I have some notes when I interviewed Sherman and I think Sherman said that your grandfather acquired this property in 1871. Now, you were how old when you came out here? Well, let's see, you were born in Chicago in 1906, so you were out here after the 1910

RK: I think I moved permanently from Chicago at the age of six weeks.

CE: Really?

RK: Yeah, maybe less.

CE: All right, now, there was quite a staff here in this wonderful house and lots of Chinese. There was Brown, the coachman, there was his son Walter, who we had the privilege of interviewing, now 89 years old.

AK: There was no Roger then.

CE: No Roger then. What were some of your earliest recollections of this house?

RK: Well, my earliest recollection, of course, would be when my grandmother was here. I don't think we were in this house very much. My grandmother was rather severe with me. I probably had it coming to me. She lived in the room that Alice and I occupy, which is just above here and I remember her as a gray-headed lady with glasses and usually a purple dressing gown or dress, something of this kind, and I was told these stories of how she could reach out and catch a fly going by with two fingers. I remember two things, and it's awful to have the impression: sometimes you say, "That makes me mad," and then she'd get into a discussion of what "mad" meant. "Mad" meant crazy, it didn't mean angry. They she'd say something about "do something" and I'd say, "I won't," and she'd say, "Don't say won't' to Grandma!"

CE: Well, you and your father and all of you children were living at that other house which they call "Not-a-how?"

RK: Well, that was a fancy name that was given it much later, you know, that was the "other house."

AK: That's what the Chinamen called it.

RK: "Not-a-how."

CE: Instead of "another house." Is that right?

AK: I think because the grandfather was sick and the poor grandma had to keep all of these children quiet because he was a crotchety, sick old man.

RK: Well, I came along after he had died. He died in the 90's, didn't he? I'm sure he did, Anne.

CE: Well, your grandmother died around 1915, I understand?

RK: 1915, I remember well. We were in Washington and expecting her to come and she was taken off the train in Salt Lake City and died.

CE: Well, then was the decision made that the family, your father and your brothers and sisters, you moved from that other "Not-a-how" over to this house and it was remodeled then? Was that it Roger?

RK: Yes. I remember some of the things on remodeling. I remember old Faville who was the architect.

AK: Made famous by the fair.

CE: By the 1915 Fair?

RK: Yes.

CE: Was that Faville and Bliss? Was that the team?

RK: Yes. And he came out here and they had a parrot and they had some other colors and he went out and picked out a leaf and a parrot feather and this, that or the other thing and he painted the house garish colors, yellow and what-not

AK: Purple and everything.

RK: Purple, and built a parrot house out there that would probably cost you $10,000 to build today, but anyway, it must have taken Oh, probably I should think the best part of a year to redo the house because, you see, what they did, they added It was one of the typical California houses, three stories, square, with a palm tree on each corner. You can still see them in the Sacramento Valley.

CE: Well, did he add that large dining room?

RK: He added the large dining room, added the living room, added all the sleeping porches upstairs.

CE: And was it the library that was converted into that large living room?

RK: Well, that was just a little parlor.

CE: Parlor. I see.

RK: And then we moved in, of course there were seven of us at that time and Tommy, Sherman and I slept on the sleeping porch and Tommy slept there quite often. I don't know whether he had another room; of course, the war came along pretty fast after we moved into this house. The thing I remember about the other house was that one night they got me up I don't know, it could be easily placed what time it was. And they said, "Come out; want to show you Haley's comet." So I went outside and stood under the small elm tree and looked up and saw this splendid exhibit and I thought to myself, "Well, hell, anytime you stay up as late as this you see that!" and went back to bed.

CE: Is this the house that is now occupied by the McCoy family on Goodhill Road?

RK: That's right.

CE: Well, originally when your grandfather came out here around 1870 or 71, he bought this entire four or five hundred acres, didn't he?

RK: It was about 850, yes.

CE: 850 acres. Then these various houses were built sort of on the family compound here, is that correct?

RK: Well, of course, it was strictly one family, you might say. I guess the Richardson's had lived in that

CE: Who are the Richardson's you are referring to?

RK: Anne would probably know better than I would, he was brought as a foreman, wasn't he, Anne?

AK: Well, he was When he was with Stanley in Chicago he was called a wheelwright and he came out from Chicago to be in charge of all building, whatever your grandfather would want built, and then he was to stay with them and build whatever was needed all the way along, but he was to have a house of his own and that was it.

CE: So was that the first house built?

AK: No, I think they were built about the same time. Well, I don't know why, he likes to say it's built before, but that's because he thought the man who was in charge should have a place to live while he was doing the work. What we wonder is who planned this house? He was responsible for building all the houses and there was a house that we don't know much about, there was a house on this 800 acres when the family first bought it. We don't know whether it was the dairy house in another place, we haven't found that out. But at any rate, every building that was here, including one that isn't here that was in the back that was laundry and things, were all built by Mr. Richardson and no one has ever seen a blueprint, we don't know anything about it.

RK: That little house is the back of the barn.

AK: The dairy house.

RK: We called that the dairy house.

AK: Well, we called it the dairyman's house. Now we know, Roger, that the coachman lived in it after he was married. We know that the coachman, who also came from Chicago with your father, lived upstairs in the barn, in the beginning, and then when he was married, they must have given him that little house to live in, and that's where all the Brown children were born. In that particular house.

RK: Anne, I remember in that house, the lumber in that house was an enormous width and length and it was supposed to be stuff that had come around the horn.

CE: Really?

RK: Yes.

CE: Not locally milled here, in Bolinas or somewhere?

RK: No, no, no. It came from the east.

AK: That's what they said. And you know, the man who owns it is going to allow you to take a picture of the original house.

CE: He has a photograph of it?

AK: Has a picture in his house and he's promised to let you have a picture of it.

RK: He had to tear it down, didn't he, Anne?

AK: He didn't have He tore it down and said he incorporated a great deal of the lumber in his library.

CE: Are we talking about the residence of Robert Scoutten?

AK: Yes, yes. But, it was a well-built, wonderful little house, as Roger said, it was just very, very nice.

CE: Well, I thought later we might just walk through the house and you might describe it a little bit, we'll walk through it. But, let's get back to this room for just a minute. It's a very comfortable room, how old is the safe in there? Did your father put that in, or did you think your grandfather?

RK: I don't know.

CE: You don't know. God, it must be seven foot tall and it's a Is it a walk-in type thing? Wall Safe & Lock Company?

RK: It's a walk-in safe. Just the other day, Alice has been goosier and goosier about the fact that the combination would almost not work, and sometimes you'd have to do it three or four times, and she said, "All of a sudden, one of these days that's not going to work and then what is going to happen?" We had a safe man look at it and he had told her it would be a disaster if that occurred so we got a safe guy in here, a nice young guy. He came and he said his father had been a safe man before him and he took it and he said, "I think we're going to have to redo this and we're going to have to put a new combination on it." Then he took a whole lock out and he was just absolutely delighted with the safe and with a five number tumbler ? and with the inside and what-not, and he said, "I have never seen one like this." I said, "What would a safe like that cost you today?" He said close to $20,000. But he did not have to change the combination so we're still there.

CE: Well, it is probable that your grandfather could have put that in?

RK: I think so, I think so, because he had a lot of stuff that he didn't want other people to be looking at I'm sure.

AK: I think it's wonderful that you have the office here, but it isn't I mean, it's almost on the spot of your grandfather's but the house was nowhere near this wide at that time.

CE: It wasn't?

AK: No, and we have plenty of pictures to show and

CE: And Mrs. Kent said she has some she'll show us, too.

RK: You see, for many, many years after we came here to this house in 1947, we used this as a laundry room, and then it only reverted back to being an office when I retired in August of 77 and I just said, "Pick up all the furniture in my room and put it on a truck and take it over," and Alice got a rug down here, and she got a couple of people to paint the place and they just moved the things in and here I am!

CE: Isn't it a great room, though?

RK: Sure.

AK: Best room in the house. It's lovely, I think, just beautiful. But Roger, you and Alice built a house long ago before you had this house. I don't even remember when that was and it included all the way down to in front of our house.

CE: Opposite 131 Goodhill?

AK: Then you sold a lower piece or your mother sold a piece to the Hoyt's, but originally it was yours.

RK: No, I didn't go to Oh, yes, to Goodhill. Yes. What happened there was that we came out and were married and living in San Francisco in an apartment and pretty soon had a child and we wanted to come over here every weekend. Then we got sick and tired of the moving, and moving bassinets and bottles and all this over here and I said I'd rather commute than do that. So Mother gave us a piece of property which adjoined the Arnold's, or the McCoy, and it went down to Goodhill, which was not in existence then, and then it went up to the top of the hill. Subsequently, I bought, from the family, property that took me down to Kent Avenue and then subsequently sold that or gave that to Mother in connection with the trade here. But we built that house. We let that contract in the bank holiday. I told Mr. Marshall how does he like that $8,000 house because that's what it cost us to build! Of course, it had many, many additions to it after that, but it was built out of seasoned redwood and seasoned cedar and

AK: You know, the house where you met Sherman, that's part of it.

RK: Yes, yes. Well, then we built that later. Well, you saw Sherman at the squash court didn't you?

AK: Yes.

RK: Well, we built that as a guest house and squash court.

CE: Well, let's get back to this house, Roger.

RK: Yes, well, when I came here to go Tamalpais High School, the road, of course, was on a different alignment, it went down towards the present Goodhill and around the hill that way.

CE: Like Vineyard, where Vineyard comes up?

RK: Yes, yes, yes. Then there was what they called the summer house hill, which was eucalyptus and a little rustic house there and there was a little trail that went over there and I would take off from here about the time I heard the train whistle for the station on my bicycle and go over the top of that place, over that hill, and up on the road and throw the bicycle out in a field and run over and catch the train. But, before that took place I would have had breakfast with one of many of the Chinese cooks and that was here, and they varied in quality of what kind of breakfast they served and what kind of lunch they packed for me to take to school.

CE: Do you remember any of their names, Roger?

AK: Leo. That was Leo.

RK: Well, Leo, but there were other ones, Anne, besides Leo. I don't remember; the only one that sticks in my mind was one who came as one of the cook's helper boys and later came back as a waiter and may even later come back as a cook. You remember that was a tradition in the Northern California area. This guy came in and Mother asked him what his name was and he said his name was Dung, and she said, "I'll call you George," didn't she, or something, I've forgotten what, anyway when he came back the next time he was George or whatever it had been.

CE: So you'd have breakfast?

RK: I'd have breakfast in the servant's dining room, which is now the gun room in which you can see in there. Which was a very, very handy place for camping goods and guns and fish rods and

CE: We'll walk through there later and you can describe it.

RK: Yes.

CE: What would they give you for breakfast?

RK: Oh, everything, oh, my God what would they give me for breakfast! What they'd do is they That's when they had the dairy here, and I can remember they'd give me a couple of shredded wheats and I'd break them in a bowl and then I'd take a pitcher of cream and I'd turn it upside down and nothing would happen for an appreciable length of time, and finally it would crack on top and then great gobs of this heavy, heavy solidified cream would fall into this shredded wheat and I'd eat that and then usually a couple of eggs after that. I went to school, of course, as I say, from the seventh grade. Tom Keating, Judge Keating, and I always have our jokes about this; we were the only two kids that went to Tamalpais High School in short pants. At that time, you went down and you got on the train and you were given a ticket that had punches to be punched and if you didn't get a punch on Wednesday, you could use it on Saturday. And so we used to have a game that we would play, to see who could get through the month with the fewest punches. You'd hide under the seat and go into the can and look the other way and everything else like that.

CR: Where was the station Roger?

RK: Well, Kentfield, right here It's hard not to be able to see it because, as it exists, it was about, say, where Woodland comes out onto College, well it would be on a direct line, directly north from Woodland, and say it would be this side of the shopping center and about half way between the shopping center and Woodland. There were several buildings there. There was a small station house, there was a baggage house, and old Tommy Minto Tommy's still alive isn't he?

AK: Yes.

RK: Have you interviewed him?

CE: Yes. He was the station master and

RK: Everything, he was everything, telegraph operator, baggage man, what-not.

CE: So you board the train there?

RK: Board the train there, you'd go to a station called Almonte.

CE: Where was that?

RK: Well, Almonte was You know where Tamalpais High School is now, you'd be on the alignment of the railroad track, is it still there?

CE: Yes.

RK: Well, after the railroad track came out of the tunnel, under Corte Madera, you went about a mile or two and then you came to Almonte and you got off there and then another train came from Sausalito and picked you all up and took you

CE: Oh, you had to transfer.

RK: You had to transfer, but I don't know why they didn't make you walk because it wasn't very damn far, but they did have a train that would transfer you down there.

CE: When did you have to get down there? What time was school? Eight?

RK: Around that. I know I was always up early, way before the rest of the family was up, and going down to catch that train. Then I used to bring all kinds of kids up here to go swimming and play football and what-not and we had the Kentfield Forward Club football team and we had the Tamalpais Lightweight football team and I guess we had this tennis court. It was in pretty poor shape and

CE: Was the pool in then?

RK: 1917, they built the pool didn't they, Anne?

AK: Well, I guess. It went with that 15 job, l915 job. I think it was finished before 1917.

RK: Well, they dug it right out of Vineyard and they had just clods of dirt and a tent, couple of tents, one for men, one for guys and gals, and it was Of course, it was a crazy pool in today's standards because it was 60 feet long and 11 feet deep so that you wouldn't hit your head on the bottom. People now never make them deeper than eight. Then the water for that pool came, you know when they had that water supply from a well down by Kent Avenue?

CE: No, I haven't. Go ahead, anyhow.

RK: Down by Kent Avenue, right at the foot of that hill where my old house used to be, you go down over that hill and there was a pump house down there and an old pump. It was a big tank. I don't know how many, but it was probably 15 feet in diameter and 15 feet high, on top of that hill and then there was another one right up here above me, above my tennis court here about a hundred yards, up on that hill and this pump would pump water from that area.

CE: Was that a spring or

RK: No, that was kind of brackish water that came down. It was not salty but it was heavily mineralized and it was quite muddy.

CE: Came down from the hill?

RK: No, from down Kent Avenue. See they pumped it from down there into these two tanks and that was the source of water for the garden and for the dairy, cleaning up the dairy, and for the swimming pool. The fresh water for the house came I suppose 90 percent of it from a spring that's right up here on this hill, just a little to the west and a little south of the McCoy's.

CE: Is that spring still going?

RK: I suppose those people are using it, if they aren't they're crazy. Then there were pipes that led all over the place to other springs that came and fed in there and by the time that I came along those pipes had become so heavy mineralized that there was only a trickle running, you know what I mean. I remember one time the old man said, "Something's in the spring house, you boys go up and get him out, see what it is." We went up there and here was a dead skunk that had been in there about two weeks I guess, so we dug the dead skunk out. But that water, that stayed as a source of domestic water inside the house and drinking water and some of the outside faucets until we started the sub-division in 1936.

CE: So there's a good 20 years that this was still virgin land in your memory?

RK: Yes. The sources of water were, one, that well and second, the springs.

CE: Was there any part of the vineyard left then, Roger?

RK: Oh, yes, there were three vineyards still. There was most of this vineyard, all of the vineyard that was up back here, back of "overflow," and then there was a vineyard right down here.

CE: South of you?

RK: South of us.

CE: What kind of grapes, do you remember, the variety you had? Were they table grapes?

RK: Yes, all The whites were mostly Verdell's, the favorite, and we're still trying to get them, Sherman and I have been working with that guy up in Davis to locate them, and we think we've located the Ambro Muscat which was the favorite table grape. Then, of course, they had Concords and a white grape I've forgotten what it was on this trellis there.

CE: You mentioned the dairy earlier, now what are your memories of that? Where were the cattle, where were the cows?

RK: They were all over the place.

CE: All over the place, just ranging around.

RK: Just ranging around. They were just like cows like most of these dairies, they would come home at night to get their hay and get water, nobody had to chase them or anything. My recollection, of course, when we moved into this place, was the barn was there and it was not essentially different looking on the outside than it is now.

AK: That was the carriage house then they were barns and chicken houses.

RK: Then there was a garage. Then there was a chicken house beyond and Margaret Stover, who has this old German doll, she took care of the chickens, then just to the side of that was the milk shed, where the cows were milked, or rather milk barn. Then the shed where they processed it was down below that.

CE: Were the Chinese involved in this?

RK: No. That was not Chinese, that was old Bill Jones, he was a Welshman, a wonderful old guy, for a long, long time and then Ferrari had a part of that. Pete Ferrari, who later worked for us and worked for the family for 50 years. Then we had a guy They finally had I think Bill did it, the cost, of course, was enormous to serve a family so he got this man named Mollenkamp who I think was a Swiss and he took over the dairy as his venture and he sold milk and butter.

CE: Well, how many cows are we talking about?

RK: We're talking about 40 or 50.

AK: At least.

RK: So old Moley ran a route, a milk route, and then one of the things he did I don't know whether he sold us milk and cream and butter at cost or whether we got it as part of the rent for the whole plant.

CE: But it relieved you of that responsibility.

RK: We didn't have that plant anymore because in the early days there was a big operation in haying. I remember Robert Cunningham and Bill Jones used to let Sherman and me ride on the ploughs and ride on the hay cutting machine.

CE: Well, where would the hay be?

RK: It would be practically every place that there wasn't vineyards or trees but it was mostly down in front just this side of Kent Avenue and then over on the other side of Woodland Road. I mean to the south of Woodland Road.

CE: How far did the original Kent property go? Towards Murray Park, or

RK: Well, it goes up on If you want to follow Rancheria Road, that will be pretty much where your eastern boundary is, then it pitched down into Baltimore Canyon, which is over that ridge and it went down all the way to join up with Larkspur and then it came back up to this ridge here and then it goes up to about the crest of the ridge. This is the ridge that is just short of Mount Tamalpais. Then it came all around that ridge and came up to the, about the top of the ridge that you see.

CE: That separates Ross

RK: Ross from in here.

CE: Is it true that your grandmother did come over what is now Wolfe Grade in a carriage and take a look at this area and said that it was paradise and she wanted it. Is that a true story?

RK: Well, I've heard it a dozen times. I don't know whether it's true or not. I suspect it is. She is supposed to have gone back and told Albert, "I have seen paradise."

CE: Wouldn't you agree?

RK: She chose well. Anne brings up this business of Tahoe and I think that should be very much in the picture.

CR: You mean in addition to this property? Was it your father who acquired Tahoe or your grandfather?

RK: My father.

AK: No. Grandmother.

RK: Was it Grandma first?

AK: Grandma has a house and it's still there on Ward Creek, where Ward Creek comes out. Then, as I understand it, she got a little sick of having such a gang come to that house all the time, so she went down the line and bought a great big piece of land, not only bought it, but built the house for your mother, which kind of hurt your mother all the time. I mean, she liked the house but she would like to have built the house herself. Built the house, which we all know now and which you have seen, down the line. There must have been, in that piece, there must have been well over a thousand feet of waterfront, lakefront, and everybody who owned on the lake front then owned across the road and way far back.

CE: I'm curious, and this is Mrs. Thomas Kent we've just heard speaking, why was she interested in Tahoe? Was this not enough area, or was that the period when Tahoe became so

RK: Well, Tahoe was just about When you say this was paradise, you just never saw such a double paradise as Tahoe was at that time! I mean for a kid as me going up there. I used to spend my days out on the dock fishing. Trout would come around the dock and then white fish and there were always minnows and chubs there and, of course, we were just always crazy about swimming and then Sherman and I would very often go off and get in boats and go trolling either with copper wire or with tie lines and we'd catch fish. One of the places that we particularly loved to go to was right next door to Grandma's place, down at the entrance of Ward Creek and we'd go out and get on the Brigg's dock, which was to the south of Ward Creek, and it went out in pretty deep water. I can remember those exciting moments when these great big trout would come out of blue water and we'd have our bait down there and they might or might not come near it. Once in a great while we caught one. We caught quite a number trolling.

CE: You'd stay there all summer, Roger?

RK: We'd stay there most of the summer, most of the summer. And at that time, there were practically no roads around the lake, there were only about 30 boats on the lake. All of these magnificent beaches all around the lake that we could go to and picnic or spend the night.

CE: How would you get there?

RK: In a launch. We had a boat.

CE: But I mean how did you get to Tahoe normally, by car?

RK: Oh, we'd go and get on a train and get off at Truckee and get on a little wood-burning locomotive, like the ones that you see in the logging trucks and it would carry you up to Tahoe and clear out onto the pier of Tahoe Tavern.

CE: Your property was a little south, wasn't it, of Tahoe Tavern?

RK: Was south of the Tavern, yes. We had this wonderful guy, William McFadden, this was my first recollection, he was I saw him three or four years ago, great pleasure, but he was boatman and chauffeur and he would go up early and get the boat in the water and then he would meet us at the Tavern pier by boat. Then we would go into town, Tahoe City, substantially every day we would go in, get mail and a newspaper and then

CE: By launch?

RK: Yes.

CE: In other words, there was no road, as such, from your property to

RK: Not at that time. Pretty shortly there started to come a road. I'm not sure on that time.

AK: Not too good.

RK: No, it was a terrible road.

CE: That was a wonderful time wasn't it?

RK: Well, then what would happen, on vegetables. I'll never forget on that trunk. They had a great big wicker trunk that was covered with canvas and that would come up from Kentfield filled with vegetables from Kentfield and be unloaded there at Tahoe City.

AK: Every week, every week.

CR: How many people could be housed, entertained, or wined and dined at Tahoe?

RK: I can understand, maybe, why mother was upset when Grandma designed the house. They had a downstairs, they had about four or five bedrooms and then upstairs, this great big house, they had it divided into two sections, one for gals and one for guys.

CE: Dormitories?

RK: Dormitories yes, yes. I was just thinking, the amount of food that mother used to buy because the older kids would have their friends, and then Addie would have maybe two or three of her friends and Sherman and I would have friends. Then they would have Chinese up there.

CE: They'd bring them up with them?

RK: Yeah. And one of the things, I don't know whether anybody's hit this or not, about the ice house?

CE: No, go ahead.

RK: Well, most ingenious business.

AK: It's still there, still there.

RK: They had a, as Anne says, that the property went back quite aways, and in the back end of it was a low spot that would fill up with water and then freeze solid.

So, come wintertime, all the Tahoe houses were built with very steep roofs so the snow would fall off, they'd hire some guy to go in there and cut ice back in that pond and throw it in that ice house with sawdust. I don't know where the hell he got the sawdust, but it would be chock full of ice and sawdust, and that ice would last all summer! They'd take out these chunks and put it in an icebox that was near the kitchen and wash it off and the Chinese would go out and use that.

CE: Well, it's surprising how long ice will stay in a cake. Maine, one of Maine's big exports was ice and they'd ship it around the horn.

RK: I'll be damned.

CE: And Robert Louis Stevenson when he was living in Samoa before his demise had ice shipped to Samoa.

RK: Well, you see we had these day trips and overnight trips that we'd go out fishing, at Tahoe, and we would do a lot of fishing and we had this great old character Chris Nelson, he was a boatman and fisherman and hunter and what-not. He had discovered from somebody else this Pyramid Lake, which is that enormous lake north of Reno.

CE: Isn't that where the Truckee River empties into?

RK: That is the end of the Truckee River because it just runs between Tahoe and Truckee and Pyramid is a dead lake, no outlet. So the first time we went there, I think I went with Anne and Tommy and Chris and we had this kid, Bill Bardene, who was the orphan. His mother had died in Wisconsin and she had been a great friend of my mother's and so Mother asked this kid to come out and spend the summer and he eventually spent the whole year here going to school. Well, the four of us went over there fishing, and there seldom has been fishing like it before or since. Anne had not been too much of a fisherman; I was only about 12 or 13 years old and not too much of a fisherman. "Pazazza," as we called Bill Bardene, didn't know one end of a rod from another and Chris, of course, was a good fisherman. But we went out on an afternoon and I think Chris took Anne and Pazazza and Tommy and I went out together, and when we came back we had something over 35 fish and they ranged from 5 to 15 pounds. That's fish this size. As I say, I dictated some of this a little while ago for a fishing story. One of the lessons that you learn when you're a fisherman and a hunter is taking care of your game. We had to clean 35 fish and hang them up in this sagebrush. There were few trees there and then, of course, you got cold in the desert at night, hotter than hell in the daytime, just miserable. But, anyway, we sat there with the headlights at night and cleaned these 35 fish. Well, the next day Anne and Tommy had enough, they didn't care whether they saw any fish or not. Tommy and I were out, we were a quarter of a mile off shore and you look down, this particular day was still, and you could see these schools of chubs, fish damn near a foot long just cruising in untold thousands around and in-between the chubs were these great big trout just coasting along and the chubs would leave them about four feet on each side, and then if they wanted to get one, they probably would just go out and get one, probably. Then we were trolling with these horrible plugs that were about six or eight inches long, all different colors, and they had triple hooks on them and one time Tommy and I were fishing and we each had a fish on and mine was ten pounds and his was fourteen, and we landed them both. Another time we had one of these plugs floating on the surface, it looked about as much like anything edible as one of these dogs and a fish came up and ate it, floating on the surface. Then we came back and we went back out, Pazazza and I caught about another 20 fish that next morning and then we went back to Tahoe and Dad said, "Take them on down the line and give them to people in the campgrounds," which we did, and that was before we did what we did subsequently at Pyramid and we never had it really as hot as this one again. But, one of the dishes that the family used to eat on Sunday breakfast was salt mackerel, they had several specialties.

CE: Up there, you mean?

RK: No, here and in New England and what-not. So, next time we brought kegs up that were maybe two feet high and 18 inches in diameter and rock salt, and we salted them and we ate Pyramid Lake cut-throat trout all winter.

CE: Did your father enjoy Tahoe?

RK: Yes. He was, of course by that time, he was really preoccupied in his political career by the time that I can remember, and I can remember he loved it and he went out hunting. I remember he went out with Chris and some of these guys one time and they got a buck and I remember he and Ben Dibblee took Sherman and me and Jack Eels up to Schmiedell Lake, back in the back country, and he loved every part of hunting and fishing and camping.

CE: The Schmiedells were your neighbors, were they not? In Tahoe?

RK: Yes, yes they were.

AK: They bought the land from him. The Schmiedells were part of the Kent property. I didn't know that at first. I think most of those neighbors along then bought the Kent property.

RK: Then, some of the times when the rest of the family didn't go up and Tommy and Anne were kind enough to take me up there and we'd go fishing and live on cereal and gin. Perfectly delightful.

CE: When did the family part with that Tahoe property? After your father's demise?

RK: Oh, yes, it was shortly after that. What they did first was, old man Schmiedell was very smart and he said, "Look, these places are disappearing that we used to go camping at," and he said, "let us buy one." There was a group of the families that were fond of doing this picnicking and camping, and so he lined up this small group and they bought Secret Harbor.

CE: On the Nevada side?

RK: On the Nevada shore. That was just great for us, we loved it, and I guess the older people liked it fairly well. At that point the What Bill, William Kent II, was running my father's estate and this house was in it and he would rent that house, the big house over on the California side, he'd rent it to somebody for a rather substantial rent every summer and the rest of us that wanted to go to Tahoe would go to Secret Harbor and camp.

CE: Now that Secret Harbor, I've driven by it with Anne Kent, is a little north of where Highway 50 comes in on that Nevada side isn't it?

RK: Highway 50, is that the one that comes over from Carson City?

CE: Yes.

RK: Yes it is, it's north of that. It went along as kind of a trust for many, many, many years and then finally that began to get too unwieldy and it went into a corporation and various shares were allotted to various families and some families bought some and some families sold some. I think there are now about 40, 45 members.

CE: Do you envision, down the road, that area becoming in the public domain?

RK: It's been very, very interesting on that because it's right square in the middle of George Whitell's enormous holdings, which, in turn, was sold to, oh, I've forgotten who, and then, in turn, purchased by the Park Service or the Department of Agriculture, I'm not sure which. I think it's in the National Forest rather that in the park. There have been many, many times, and when Grant Sawyer was Governor of Nevada, I talked to him and he said, "Hell, no, we're not going to acquire Secret Harbor." He said, "It's just the kind of use we'd like to have made. It's not a casino and it's not a gambling joint and it's not a bar and we don't object to people being there." Then he told me later they were going to buy it, Nevada was going to buy it. Well, Nevada has never bought it and the Department of Agriculture and the Park Service, I don't know whether they will ever do it or not. They've got some very fortunate people living in a very, very with a place to camp very nice place, but they're not having a destructive use of surrounding public land.

CE: It's getting near noon hour and we don't want to take up too much time. Could we walk through the house and you do a little description of this, and some history?

RK: Sure. You're in the southwest corner. This room here is another office that Alice uses that is of no particular interest.

CE: We're leaving not the There seems to be a veranda around the entire house.

RK: That was Faville's idea.

CE: With these beautiful columns. Now we're walking back into the laundry area, back into this large kitchen. I notice it is a very warm, commodious room and you've got a great old wood stove there.

RK: Al why don't you tell them about the design of the kitchen and your beautiful things here.

CE: This is Mrs. Roger Kent talking. This is a friendly room.

Alice: This is one of two rooms I changed.

CE: You changed, Alice.

Alice: I left all the rest the same as it had been through the years. I came into the kitchen when we moved in, it was painted a dun color for the Chinamen, I guess, and it had a granite sink under the windows and the rest was wall space.

CE: This room must be about 18 by 14 maybe.

Alice: It's a big room. But there was nothing in it, there were no counters. I don't remember any place.

CE: Was this the original kitchen?

Alice: Yes. It had The wood stove was out in the middle facing the other way, and then there was a lovely big gas range that I've kept, you know with the ovens way up high instead of way down below somewhere. And, it was blocked off and all plastered so there was no sign of this brick wall, it was blocked off.

CE: Oh, you removed that and exposed the brick, then?

Alice: Yes.

CE: Very attractive. Very attractive.

Alice: When we found brick under there we could hardly wait. But it was blocked off here with high windows, so you had a little bit of north light in a big dark room with a big table in the middle in the old kitchen style. So if you wanted to cook and needed water you had to go around the table and way over there to get it.

CE: You've got some good size "reefers" in here, Roger.

Alice: Incidentally, the original type Frigidaire was here when I came, with motor in the bottom, in the basement, and it pumped it up and this wall there was this big pantry safe that had all screened places for the potatoes and the vegetables.

CE: Does that door go out into what had been the old pantry?

Alice: No. That used to go to what was called the servant's dining room. So it was two rooms, the servant's dining room and the pantry and in the middle of the pantry was this great big refrigerator, all lead.

CE: I see this one wall here you have a bulletin board with some family photographs and I see, Roger, you have some of Hubert Humphrey.

RK: We put them up in tribute when the dear man died.

Alice: We haven't taken them down. Nor other Christmas cards. They'll get there yet. That clock, of course, was in the room, but not electrified.

CE: It's working.

Alice: It didn't work so I had it made into an electric clock because I love the clock.

CE: It is a beautiful thing.

Alice: But when I came in I said I want a convenient kitchen because I know I'm going to be spending an awful lot of my time in here which I don't think either of the preceding Mrs. Kents had done.

AK: Stove, Alice

Alice: Yes, as I say it was facing the other way.

AK: Oh, I don't remember the stove at all.

Alice: And this has a section where our laundry is now.

CE: This is still warm. You've used this

Alice: Yes, all the time. That's nice.

CE: Well, let's walk through. Thank you, Alice.

Alice: Outside here was the big screened laundry porch, not laundry. What would it have been?

AK: Oh, it was a big back porch.

Alice: Back porch, yes. Also Roger's father's gun room took up some of that section. That came off only the office.

CE: I see.

AK: It's about where the door is now, I guess.

Alice: Yes.

CE: Now we're going into what, the wine cellar?

Alice: This is the gun room. This was the little servant's dining room and the big pantry and there was the outside door to the pantry there, so you could bring in goods from there.

CE: And here's some of the artifacts, memorabilia, of lots of years of Tahoe and hunting. You've got a dozen rifles there, shotguns, my Lord!

AK: You have pictures that you'll let her copy.

Alice: Oh, loads, I should say.

CE: All right, let's walk through here. We really didn't buy the place by calling it a wine cellar.

CE: Oh, I saw a few cases of wine on an angle there.

RK: Some of them were Parducci, half-gallon.

Alice: The main thing I really wanted was light.

CE: And you got it.

Alice: I don't know how the Chinese people lived in this house. It was so dark in this kitchen.

AK: Well, back home I guess.

CE: Lead on, Roger.

Alice: Well, what else would you like to see, the house itself?

CE: Well, I thought he or you, whomever, might describe a little so we could have some of this on tape. Now we're walking past the staircase that goes upstairs.

RK: We also have an elevator here.

CE: You do?

RK: It was put in when Alice was very sick.

AK: Which they never had.

RK: They never had, it was put in when Alice was very sick with TB and then she got over it and I got a bum hip and she runs up and down stairs and I use the elevator.

CE: What do you call this room? We entered through this door. You have a beautiful spray of spring blossoms.

RK: We used to call it the back hall. It's no

Alice: Well, this was the other problem, was that when they divided the place up and gave us this lily pond with the house in the middle of it they wouldn't let us come up the front entrance any longer, they blocked that off so we had to come up the back through the vegetable garden and there's never been a front door. And I still can't make This was the old flower-arranging back hall, games and coat closet and all that but now it's my front hall.

CE: Now we're walking in the main entry hallway.

Alice: Yes, and you can see where the old big entrance was.

CE: Yes. Was this room one that was added, Roger, when your family

RK: The two big rooms downstairs: this was the dining room that was added and that, of course, is one piece of redwood.

CE: My Lord, how long is that massive dining room table?

RK: What is it 18 feet?

Alice: I think so. I think it's 22.

CE: What a treasure. How many people can you seat in this dining room?

Alice: It seats 22 just right.

CE: 22. On this table, and then you've got a circular table that

RK: Then when we have the whole family we have a liner that went down here to that round one and we'd get 40 in here.

AK: This was the edge of the house, Carla.

CE: Yes. Then this was added.

AK: You can see in the picture outside.

CE: And we are looking sort of northwest and there's the pool and the loggia

Alice: When we came, the driveway came up here and around to the garage and that was awful because all the people would drive on past and look in as you were having lunch.

CE: No privacy at all.

Alice: Or park their cars there so you couldn't see the pool from here.

AK: Oh, that was awful.

RK: There used to be walkways and flower gardens that went out this way and broke up this whole expanse, which is now lawn, and it was this great Tommy Church, the landscape architect, that came over here and looked at it for about fifteen minutes and he said, "This is what I'd do." And this is what we did and it is just absolutely perfect.

CE: It's like a park. It's a beautiful flow of greenery, just gorgeous.

RK: And with those brick That repeats the curves that go out to the swimming pool.

CE: Yes, well he's just a talented man. And I see you have, again, another fireplace and this original This was the original dining room?

RK: Yes.

CE: What kind of wood have we got in here?

RK: All redwood.

CE: All redwood. And this had just been grained a little bit. All right, now we're walking over into it looks like it had been originally a study, is this correct?

Alice: No this is These are just two more little rooms just like the next two and it was split down the middle and finished here. This was the end of the house. Then, first of all, Mrs. A. E. Kent, didn't she change, take out the middle section?

AK: You know we have such fun watching; from the different pictures, you can tell. Now this in the original this must have been two parlors with a fireplace here and maybe in both sides and you can see the chimney goes right up from here. Then I think the great grandmother decided to have one room, this one room here, and the fireplace was here.

RK: My recollection was only one.

CE: It's a beautiful room for large gatherings.

RK: We've got 300 people in here. Two thousand people here you know for some of these affairs.

AK: And that meant three stories up for a brick chimney; that was a pretty wonderful thing to do.

Alice: That was the one they changed, too?

AK: I think that's the way it was.

Alice: Because this was the end of the house, did the fireplace go up at the end of the house?

AK: The fireplace on the outside then. That's the way I understood and then one was made in 1915.

CE: Where is the front door?

RK: There is the old front door right there.

CE: Let's walk towards it then. Now we have double doors of glass and this was the original front door.

Alice: This is the original and you walked up There was a great big turn around there for the carriages, with the palm tree and red salvia, and you walked up here. It was a little narrow porch covered with smilax. Lots of the trim of this house is still made from what was the railing all the way around that porch. Then you entered here into two little parlors.

AK: This is just about the way it was, don't you think, this room?

Alice: Yes.

CE: To our right is a typical parlor of that era with the Victorian furniture.

Alice: This was known as the "Cupid Room."

CE: Cupid!

Alice: Mighty uncomfortable cupid.

CE: For matchmaking?

CE: This is where one received the beaux.

Alice: So they didn't have to sit with the family.

CE: At the head of this beautiful staircase is a portrait; is that of your grandmother?

RK: Yes.

CE: That is a beautiful thing.

Alice: Anne, will you please settle with us one thing? Why is it Adeline E. Kent School instead of Adeline D. Kent School? Adeline Elizabeth Dutton Kent .

AK: Well, they must have been told her name was Adeline Elizabeth, I suppose.

Alice: Was it Adeline Elizabeth?

AK: We don't know, but that's the only thing I've ever heard.

Alice: I think they made a mistake and thought it was A. E. Kent.

AK: Could have been, could have been. Well, don't tell them anyway because they almost lost it, did you know that?

Alice: I'm not I won't go upsetting their apple cart.

AK: Did you know that? Almost wiped the name off when they took the middle school and, oh, Lord, a woman came to me, she was in the Mother's Club, I guess, and she wanted to know if I could tell her something about who was Mrs. Kent because, "They are changing the name of the school." I said, "They'd just better not change the name of the school." I felt like saying, "Maybe you'll lose the school if you do." But anyway, I did tell her about the Grandma Kent, as much as I could, and she went back, and they did take the old sign off and put a new sign. I can't see that it's any different or any better, but anyway they did put the name on there.

Alice: D?

AK: A! They were just going to have "Middle School," they weren't going to have any name for it.

Alice: Oh, that's awful.

CE: There's a painting in the hall that intrigues me. Do we know who did that?

Alice: Ask Anne. That's just one of the ones that just stays up.

AK: I don't know. I never could see well enough to know who did it.

Alice: I don't know if it's an early Serbaroli or not.

CE: Well, it isn't Keith.

Alice: And I don't know who did the portrait, do you?

AK: No, but I think maybe Serbaroli did it. It's done from a picture, it's not done from life, and it wasn't very good because I think as long as Margaret lived, she used to come and say, "Goodnight, Mrs. Kent ," to the picture. It was real enough to her and she was with Grandma Kent all the time.

Alice: Well, Sherman Kent was a little boy when it was painted because she had a gold brooch at the neck of her lace.

CE: He was born in 190, something about that.

Alice: Yes. And he remembers picking off a little bit of gold that stuck way out, you know, like a little piece of oil paint. So, he must have been very little.

AK: Isn't there a name on it?

Alice: I don't think so.

AK: It would be pretty hard to see, but I think maybe it was Serbaroli

CE: I think that could be found out. Then upstairs we won't bother to go to, but you have a few bedrooms I presume.

Alice: The only room up there I changed was our room, which originally was the billiard room.

CE: The billiard room, the master bedroom now.

Alice: That was the only room the men could smoke in, so they'd go up after supper. This is way back; this is A. E. Kent times.

CE: I guess Mrs. A. E. Kent was against smoking.

Alice: And she wrote a letter to Aunt Mary Burke, when Aunt Mary was at Westover and said, "Mary I've just bought a painting." And Aunt Mary just couldn't believe it because she knew she really wasn't very art minded. She said, "I'm not going to tell you about it until you come out." So when she came back at summertime, what she had done was cut out the huge big window up there and that was her painting, of the mountain.

AK: Don't you think that's pretty wonderful, though?

CE: How wonderful.

AK: That far back for that woman to get that great beautiful window in there. I wish we knew more about her. When Roger talks about poor old Grandmother it makes me think that's just what my kids, I'm sure, Alice and all the rest of them think that.

CE: No, they won't because we have you on tape, and they can hear you.

AK: I know but children have that kind of And especially when people are sick or in wheelchairs, you know, they don't ever think of them that they ever were younger.

Alice: It just breaks my heart that my children remember my great Armsby father as just a doddering old imbecile.

CE: Yes, that's in every family and that's really too bad.

RK: And these things that came out in that gal that wrote that Marin History a while back, about all the things that Grandma was involved in and took a leadership role in. She was a wonderful woman and I just have no recollection of any part of it.

AK: No, no. I wish I had known her, of course she was gone, see, I wouldn't know.

Alice: What did you tell us the fly story?

RK: I told them the fly story, yes.

Alice: The hat story?

RK: No, I didn't tell the hat story.

CE: Let's go in this other room. What is this hat story?

Alice: One of her favorite tricks, it was in the days when the little boys wore, you know, white hats and tied them

CE: Little boater hats, you mean?

Alice: Yes, protected under the chin with a black rubber band, elastic. And her pet thing was to have them, "Come on up and see me!" and then pull that and let it go and snap under their chin.

AK: Oh, that was awful mean.

Alice: That's a mean memory to keep.

CE: What was her size physically; was she a small woman? Was she about Anne Kent's size?

RK: I don't recall.

AK: I saw a picture of her one time with a little puppy in her arm coming toward the dairy house, and I think one of the people in the dairy house must have taken the picture; she looked rather tall and certainly not fat.

CE: She looks rather imposing in this portrait.

Alice: Yes. And all those beautiful pictures of her, young, really, she was a very handsome lady.

RK: Those Dutton sisters.

AK: Of course, she took care of everybody. It said that she was a well, I forget how they worded it, but anyway, she was the kind of person who was always taking care of people. She took care of her little sisters when her mother died. I thought it was pretty wonderful that Granny wrote a letter for the women's club, I guess it was.

CE: Granny is?

RK: My mother.

AK: Mrs. Kent . And she told about how they sat here in front of the fire talking about things, how the boys were doing, vandalism, great vandalism around the post office and all the rest of it, and that was in 1907, I guess, then Grandmother said, "Well, I think it's because they haven't any recreation place, there's no place to play baseball" She was a great lover of baseball, too, they said. So they worked it out, there was her son William sitting there with her and Elizabeth and they worked it out that she would give the property down there for recreation and education and that included all of Tamalpais Centre and the school property.

CE: Roger's mother tells about this in her biography of William Kent and what was involved here, 29 acres?

AK: Well, 29 of it went to the Tamalpais Centre and the balance of it went to the school, the little school which is newly redone now, but it's one piece of property.

CE: The Adeline Kent School?

AK: Yes. The thing that I wonder about, Roger, is that the boundary was the creek, you know how important creeks are, the boundary was the creek. So, then the engineers came in when it's later given to the college. The engineers come in and they take off a big loop, they go through here and they go through there, and what about the lines now? Legal lines. I wonder about that. But, anyway, Tamalpais Centre is given to the college now, but it has to be forever and ever, it's got to be for education and recreation and that's the way it says in the deed.

CE: In the articles of incorporation, deed.

AK: In the deed. And I think that included the Women's Club piece and the

Alice: Gymnasium.

AK: Where the gym is was the Tamalpais Centre, but the school also was included in that, which is pretty far-thinking it seems to me, all of that land.

CE: Well, the whole Kent family certainly were far-thinking when you think of Mr. William Kent, and his farsightedness in doing what he did to prevent the filling in of Muir Woods and making a dam out of that and providing water.

AK: That's what lots of people don't know; they don't know that would have happened within a short time. And you know, I should think, Roger , there should be some way for us to find in the newspapers or somewhere where it would tell who that was that was going to make a dam.

CE: Well, it is probably public record.

AK: And we know that in the promise to those people in Belvedere and Mill Valley whoever they were that were going to get the water, they said, "It probably won't cost you any money because there are enough board feet in that Redwood Canyon to pay for the job." Can you imagine anything like that? And then I thought the most wonderful thing is that, having succeeded, which is an awful hard job to do, having succeeded in buying it and stopping that thing, I thought it was so like him to not just drop it and say, "See what a fine boy I am," kind of thing, you know, he thought if somebody would do such a terrible thing as that there really must be a great need of water. That's when he got O'Shaughnessy and whoever else it was and really the water district was the outcome of that. It's a thrilling story, I think.

CE: It is a thrilling story. I wonder what he would have done in these past two years with the drought or what imaginative things he might have come up with.

RK: You know, you asked about all the land that had been taken in.

CE: Yes.

RK: Well, I suppose that the vast amount of land that is in public domain went in that Marin Municipal Water District in 1915. Then Dad gave some other land on Mount Tamalpais, too, the Mountain Play area.

CE: Mountain Play area, Cushing's, Sydney Cushing's.

RK: Then some property adjoining Muir Woods was sold for half price.

CE: Steep Ravine.

RK: Steep Ravine was much later. Of course, the luckiest of all things was to have had the lousy transportation around here forbade the development of West Marin. So that when some farsighted people came along, after my father, Point Reyes was sitting out there and could be bought for a price that nothing approaching it is anywhere near any other major city in the country.

CE: Well, I've told so many people, "What other place in the United States are you so near one of the great cosmopolitan cities of this country and have 500 square miles of Marin County, a county that has 50,000 acres in the public domain at Point Reyes National Seashore, done in l962, and then in 1972, during Nixon's administration, another 30,000 acres in the Golden Gate National Recreational Area, all those thousands of acres in the Marin Municipal Water District. 17,000 in Mount Tamalpais State Park, another 300 in Muir Woods," which your father did. It is a rare thing.

RK: It certainly is. It certainly is.

CE: Well, I think, your father, I think, set the tone for this county in an awareness of conservation and in water and I think we're just beginning to realize the tremendous debt we do have to the William Kent family.

Alice: There's one more thing. I don't know if you told about your father never liking to have paper stocks. That he put money into forest and land and mines and all things that were visible and real and earthy.

CE: Well, like your father had land in Idaho, Nevada, wasn't it?

RK: Nevada, Nebraska

CE: Nebraska and Chicago, of course.

Alice: Florida.

AK: North Carolina. Always land, always land.

CE: Well, Roger, I certainly want to thank you for giving us this time today and I would like to, not today but some other time, perhaps we can get some photographs. Take some of the property just to put in the file for the archives in the future and any that you'd like to share with us why we'd be very happy.

Alice: Well, I have lots that you should see. I have a great many.

CE: Thank you very much.

RK: You bet.

CE: It's been a pleasure.