My Dad was from Oregon, he was from a cattle ranching family, they were real cowboys who owned cows. My Dad had courage and he came to California on his own and he got a job here in California and he did well at every job that he had. He met my Mother here in California, and my Mom was a beautiful young California girl with her own beauty shop and two houses, she has always been smart. My Mother and Father were married in Las Vegas. When I was born my father worked for the Los Angeles County Road Department, and they sent him to school to study Business at Pepperdine in Malibu. His dream was to own his own cattle ranch, so my Mother and Father sold my Mother's beauty shop and her two houses and they bought a huge chunk of land outside of Battle Mountain, Nevada, and they raised cattle and pigs. It did not work out, so we ended up at my Grandmother's house in San Bernardino where I attended Kindergarten. Then we ended up in Oregon, where my Father worked as a Hay Broker, buying hay before it was planted and then picking it up from the fields after it was grown and baled and delivering it to farmers and ranchers. He died while delivering hay to a ranch in Oregon, he was struck by lightening when I was 9 years old, just before my 10th birthday.
He was a good man, people loved him, and he had courage, he could go anywhere in the world and get a job and rise to the top. It takes courage to travel to new places and to get a job and to rise. And it is hard, a lot of times when I went to new places I could not find a job and I ended up homeless. I tried to move to Italy, I wish I could have gotten a job in Italy and found a wife in Italy, like my Father would have done. He would have went to Italy and he would have succeeded, and he would have married the most beautiful woman in Italy, my Mother was quite a catch for him, my Mother is a great woman.
Salute,
Tony V.