Bradshaw Perkins - Family
“My name is Bradshaw Fisher Perkins Junior and I was born in Illinois. My father and mother were born in Illinois also, Chicago. They both worked there. I don’t remember when my father married my mother. That part is kind of a blank to me but I do remember that my father's side of the family was two sisters and a brother. Making it two brothers and two sisters. And his mother’s name was Grace Bradshaw Perkins and she and my grandfather went by the nicknames of Mowie and Fowie. I don’t know how that came about because well I was asked once before and I don’t remember at all but she wanted to be called Mowie and so that’s what we did. My father, worked in Chicago for quite a while and during the era before the World War II, 1938. Douglas Aircraft came to Illinois looking for engineers and he was working for an electrical company at that time. And uh, they gave him some paperwork and asked him if he would be interested and about that time, why his mother started asking for more things for him to do and he decided that he would like to go to California and get away from his mother and his sisters and brother. So they decided that they would go and in 1939 we went to Santa Monica, California, moved and he went to work for Douglas Aircraft and he worked there for quite some time as an engineer.”
Bradshaw Perkins - California Dreaming
"We moved to Santa Monica and my father went to work for Douglas Aircraft Company and at the time we were just renting and we liked Santa Monica quite well but at that particular time it was expensive. We decided that we would move from there. We moved to Venice, California. We had our huge house there and then found out that it was inundated with fleas. So we decided that we’d better get out of there because they were bothering the whole bunch of us. I can’t remember who found the house in Culver City but we rented a house there in Culver City, California, and we stayed there for almost 8 years."
Bradshaw Perkins - Living in Anchorage, Alaska
"I had moved to Anchorage, Alaska, and I was working for the Alaska airlines. My wife and I had fraternal twins in Anchorage and we kept asking people like my mother, “Come on up and visit us.” She says, “I don’t want to go anyplace where all this snow is!” I say, “During the the summer time,” I said, “We grow some of the most beautiful vegetables
you can buy!” She isn’t going to come up. After a period of time, we decided that since no one was coming up to visit us, that we would go down there. And the interim part before we left, nobody would take care of anybody with twins. Each time that we wanted to go to a movie or something we had to do it by ourselves and again, that was one of the deals that got us so we didn’t want to be that way anymore."
Bradshaw Perkins - Considers Moving
"Well at the time, I was working for Alaska Airlines. I had become an A&E Mechanic and I was working on hydraulics mostly. My father sent us a letter and said to come on down here and live with us and you can work for Aerojet down here. So I say alright and working for Alaska Airlines you got to fly any place and the only thing that it cost you was tax. So we got aboard at a big ship and uh we flew down to Azusa and my father picked us up and the whole place was all clouded up with uh all this dark sky. And I looked around and I says we aren’t staying here Alaska’s clear as a bell."
Bradshaw Perkins - Gets a New Job
"We stayed down there (Azusa) for about a week and the smog down there was so bad and I told my dad I said, “We’re not staying here.” So we went out and we bought a car and I packed my mother-in-law, my wife, and the two children in the car and I say we’re going back to Anchorage. My dad says would you please stop in Sacramento and see a man by the name of Barnsworth. He says, I know him quite well and he’s running a hydraulics. They need people like you with your education there, really badly. I say, I’ll stop by but that’s all I’ll do. So we drove up to Sacramento and this was on a Friday afternoon, and I pulled up to Aerojets parking area and went to the guard at the gate. They called him and he came right out and he started talking to me and he said, “What is your credentials?” And I told him I worked for Alaska Airlines and I became and A&E mechanic, which is airframe and engine and I’m featured in hydraulics. He says, “That’s what we need in our testings area for the engines,” and stuff like that because this was all liquid. And I says, “Well I don’t know” and he says “Could you start today?” I says “Excuse me?” I said, “Everything I own is in that car out there.” And he says, “Well how about Monday then? Could you come back Monday and start?” I said, “I’ll see.""
Bradshaw Perkins - Buying a House
"Fortunately, my wife knew a gal up here that worked for Aerojet that used to work in the Southern California area and they were quite friendly. She was able to call her. So this gal came over and said, “What do we need?” And she says, “We don’t have a thing. Everything we own is in that car.” So uh she says “Well let’s go over here.” And this gal and my wife went out and came back, said “We bought a house.” I says, “You bought a house?” She says yes. She says we bought a brand new house in Fair Oaks, California. So I went over there and I looked at that and it was all hardwood floors, a nice, nice house. So I says, alright what are we going to do for furniture? Well, the gal says, “We have a bed that we can let you use.” My wife and I were carrying a crib for the children so we were able to take care of that but we didn’t have a place to sleep. So she said that she would take care of that for us and the bedding. And then my wife’s brother came in and says, “Oh I’ve got a real nice couch you can have.”"
Bradshaw Perkins - Change in Careers
"I got to the point where I was called on by somebody at Folsom prison. Said we need an instructor here, I heard you used to work at Aerojet and we were told that you were good in hydraulics and that’s who we need. So I says well what’s the story there? Well, they offered me quite a bit of money and at the time I wasn’t making a lot. So I says all right. So I went to work at Folsom prison and I worked there for three years. And the thing that bothered me the most was slamming the doors when you would leave. They were all metal doors or grates. And I decided that I didn’t want to stay there anymore. So I came out and this fellow came over to me and he said he was working for the state of California and I'd be just the man they needed to go to work at the bureau of auto repair. And I said really? And I knew him from Aerojet. So I went and I signed all the paperwork and within two weeks I was working for the Bureau of auto repair."
Bradshaw Perkins - Dating
"I lived up there in, in Idaho for a while and my wife passed away when I was living up there. Passed away in 2010. I was living by myself and I couldn’t find anybody that matched my wife. And I went out with different women periodically and I wasn’t happy with any of them and this one lady says what’s wrong with you? And I say I try to compare them with my wife and I was married with her for 55 years."
Bradshaw Perkins - Kids Leaving the Nest
"When my children, three children got out of high school they all went into the service with maybe, well, the twins of course being the same age, they went in first and my oldest son...
Interviewer: two girls?
Bradshaw: No, no. Two boys.
Interviewer: boy, girl, and a boy?
Bradshaw: Boy, girl, and a boy.
...and the boy was very headstrong. He goes into the Marine Corp. I say, his name is same as mine, Bradshaw. I say, and we nicknamed him Shawn. I said, Shawn they’re gonna kill you, that’s the Marine Corp! He couldn’t get enough of it. I mean he was Marine All. The. Way. So, my daughter goes into the navy and she goes in and she starts working and she was very smart young lady. And they said, we need someone like you at the pentagon. So she says fine. So she goes up to the pentagon and my other son he was uh a year younger. So he had to wait another five months. He went into the navy, and I thought oh that’s that’s really neat. But my wife and I, kind of like looking at each other. All of a sudden nobody’s in the house."
Bradshaw Perkins - Calling a Bluff
"We didn’t fight. We never fought but we got silent treatments between the two of us. And this one time she wrote me a two page letter. She says, “I’m gonna divorce you.” Well, being headstrong and most of the time having my way. I say, “Alright do it.”"
Bradshaw Perkins - Wins Back His Wife
"So I went over to her house, took her out to dinner. Came back, opened up the box with the ring in it, got down on my knees and said, “Would you marry me?” She says, “No.” Looked right at me with this, said no. I didn’t know what hit me. I get up, go out, get in the car. I start coming back here to Rancho Cordova. She can’t say that to me! She’s gonna marry me. I drove back, knocked on the door. She says, what do you want? I says, I want you to marry me. She says, “Okay.” So we stayed together for 55 years and everybody thought that we were a loving couple. Because we were always hand in hand. I opened all the doors for her, car doors, big doors, all that stuff and we were a nice couple."
Transcription and Audio Edit by Ileana Chavez.