By BILL YEE
My father-in-law Lewis Abe once said you don’t need a lot of friends, only a few good friends. He always felt he was truly wealthy and blessed with a few good friends.
He experienced this when his nursery was washed away during a flood in 1969. His plants ended up on Highway 101. He didn’t know what to do and felt he had lost his business. He had four young kids and a wife to support.
What happened was his friends and family came up several weekends to replant and clean up his flooded nursery. He was so grateful and never forgot what they had done for him.
I feel fortunate to have kept in touch with my college roommates.
My Cal college roommates and I during the pandemic began a weekly Zoom meeting just to keep in touch and to have social interaction. I treasure our weekly meetings.
We have been doing this on Sunday evenings for many years. It’s a chance for us to update each other about our lives. The technology of Zoom has allowed for this. These are friendships that have spanned over 50 years.
In college we used to talk about sports, girls and our future career goals. Now we tell each other about our kids and grandkids. As with most old people (we are all in our 70s), we share our medical problems. All of us have had some sort of physical issue related to the aging process.
We have shared both the ups and downs of our lives. My cousin Warren passed a few years ago. One of the roommates is a widower.
We talk about our investments and great retirements. What is quite evident is that we all have lived the American Dream. We have had discussions on how fortunate we are. We share many common experiences.
We are ABCs (American-born Chinese). Our parents were all immigrants from southern China. They made great sacrifices so that their kids could go to college. We were all first-generation college students who were able to obtain Berkeley degrees.
Our parents also had jobs that meant long hours and menial labor to provide a living for their families. I believe that this influenced us all with our work ethic.
Coming from working-class families, we all had to work in some form during our college days to finance our educations. We did get some financial support in the form of grants or work-study jobs. None of us were born with silver spoons.
Another common theme of my roommates was our connection to San Francisco’s Chinatown. Two of my roommates grew up in Ping Yuen, the public housing projects in Chinatown.
All of us were born at Chinese Hospital on Jackson Street. Two of us were Chinatown tour guides. Our parents shopped in Chinatown. Chinatown was the center of family association events. We attended numerous red egg and ginger parties and wedding banquets.
We shared the common experiences of being the first generation born in America.
I think we all treasure the friendship that we have shared all of these years.
Finally, every few years we take a guys’ trip together. We don’t visit anyplace in particular; it’s just an opportunity to hang out with each other and eat good food!
In a sense all six (my cousin Warren passed in 2023) of us have lived the American Dream. We are all one generation removed from being peasants in rural southern China.
If our parents had not come to America, we might be pictured planting rice with a water buffalo in the background.
So, as we celebrate the 250th birthday of our country, Thomas Jefferson’s words — the American Promise — have great meaning. Let’s all appreciate that despite our country’s flaws, we are blessed to live in a great country!
Bill Yee is a retired Alhambra High School history teacher. He can be reached at paperson52@gmail.com. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of The Rafu Shimpo.