People sometimes ask me if I remember the 1906 Earthquake. Not only do I remember the Big One, but, Hell, I brought it on! After leaving Northern Italy, crossing France, getting on a steamship and crossing the Atlantic in steerage and processed through Ellis Island, my younger brother John and I and my mother arrived in San Francisco by cross-country train the night before the big San Francisco earthquake.

It was April 17, 1906. I was 8. Early in the morning, on April 18 things shook up. They couldn't stand our presence so they shook the hell out of us, I guess. Our father met us the night before the earthquake as planned.