Rios, Dan. Interview March 30th, 2017

Dan Rios: My name is Daniel Flores Rios, born in Hanford, California. April 10th, 1939.

Alexa Clausen: We have put together some questions. Tell us a little about your childhood, you had told us about leaving the Fresno area.

DR: I was born in the Central Valley. My family were all field workers. They picked all sorts of fruits, cotton, stuff like that. The weather was miserable 00:01:00. The winters were freezing cold, the summers were blistering hot, and I never liked the place. So I convinced my mother and father we should move out of there. And in 1953, we moved to San Diego. Settled in Ocean Beach for a little while. Eventually we bought property in Mission Valley, had a house built. Worked with a company in La Jolla doing landscaping, gardening at the age of 14. I quit school in the middle of 8th grade. Never went back there to finish junior high or never even went to high school. I worked in La Jolla for two years for a gardening and landscaping company.

AC: Now when you 00:02:00said they came to San Diego, you had other family here?

DR: Yes, I had two aunts that lived here. That brought us here. Also had a sister who moved here prior to our moving here. We rented place on the beach, Ocean Beach right on the beach. It's called The Ocean Village, we had a little cabin there. At that point it was my father, my mother, my sister, two brothers and myself. I believe a sister too. The other two sisters had already married and moved out.

AC: What did they come to do? What did mom and dad come to do?

DR: (laughs) Well they came because I bugged the--

AC: Said get me out of this-- (unintelligible, Clausen and Rios talking over each other)

DR: I just hated Hanford.

AC: Oh I’m sorry--

DR: I dreaded--I mean we were poor, we weren't dissident, we owned our home 00:03:00, our own car. But it was not a good life, it was a miserable life. And I told my mother once, I said, “I know we are going to be poor the rest of our lives, why do we have to be poor and miserable too.” (laughs) I just hounded her and convinced her that we had to move out of town. And we did in 1953.

AC: Right, but they knew there would be work in San Diego?

DR: Yes, my brother-in-law had gotten a job with landscaping company in La Jolla and he was pretty sure that both my father and I--

AC: There was room to have you join them.

DR: Yes. Right. Yes.

AC: Now you know, you’re were still very young here when you’re doing the landscaping.

DR: Yes, I was fourteen years old.

AC: That’s sure a long cry from getting to be a, you know, quite an well-established photographer, and Lucy (Berk, a local historian who met Dan when she worked as the librarian for Times Advocate) told me also an artist, a photographer as an artist--

DR: Yes.

AC: So, let's fast forward your career a little 00:04:00bit here. So here you are, a kid, landscaping and thinking to yourself, well what? I want to buy a camera? What do I have to do?

DR: (laughs). Oh, no, no, no. I took to gardening and landscaping like a termite to wood. I loved it. I read a lot of books on it. I was very good, I was excellent at it. I had a natural sense of design, I learned thousands of plant names and fertilizers and insecticides. At the age of 16—at the age of 14, I was working three days a week at the La Jolla Art Center. Three days a week. Three full days a week. And I figured after two years of doing that, that I could take over the contract and work 00:05:00only three days a week making as much money as I was working five days a week. So I talked to Dr. Malone who was the director, and asked him if I could take over the job at 16 years old. And he did not laugh me away as most people would have done. He talked to the Board and they agreed. So I worked three 8-hour days, and then the other two days of the week I worked other jobs. Eventually, I worked six days a week, and I was getting a lot of contracts, a lot of work at 16, 17 years old. So then I called my father to come and help me and my business and got him away from the landscaping company. We did that for about 15 years.

AC: Did you have a business name?

DR: Dan Rios Complete Garden Service and Landscaping. Had no license, no insurance. (laughs)

AC: But you know that was not a big deal then.

DR: No it wasn’t.

AC: It was simply 00:06:00not a big deal. Most people didn't care, and--

DR: No. Nobody questioned me. I was never stopped by the city, by the police, or anybody. But I was 16 years old, did not have a driver's license.

AC: Now that was bad, that was a problem. (laughs)

DR: So I went to buy a '55 Chevrolet pickup, I had the financing and everything, but I had no driver's license. So the salesman ordered me to go to National City (California), get a driver's license.

AC: Down to the DMV.

DR: Yes and got it. I made really, really good money. I remember. between my father and I, say in 1957 - 58 (we were) making $20,000 a year. And I researched and I found out at the time high school teachers were making $5000 a year.

AC: Oh yeah you could probably buy a little home for eighteen 00:07:00or seventeen thousand at the time.

DR: We bought a piece of land in Mission Valley for $4000. Paid that off and then we had a house built. It was a 2,000 square foot house for $10,000. The payments were $72 a month. I told my mother, “You know in ten years that’s going to be nothing. That’s going to be a drop in the bucket.”

AC: And it was true.

DR: Yes. Oh yeah. She died living there. She died in 1980. We built the house in '58.

AC: So did she work? Did she end up--

DR: No, no, she was--not any more. She did in Hanford. She had an amputated leg and even with that she went out in the fields and pick grapes and picked cotton. And did all kinds of field work.

AC: Give me your mother's name.

DR: Jennie. Jennie Rios.

AC: And father's name?

DR: Theodore.

AC: Theodore. OK. And were they from that Northern California 00:08:00 area?

DR: No, no, no. They immigrated separately to the United States during the Mexican Revolution about 1915-16.

AC: I’ll be darned.

DR: I think my mother was six years old. I think my father was nine years old.

AC: Yeah. They came as children.

DR: They crossed at El Paso. And they worked themselves--my father worked as a water-boy on the railroad tracks coming to California. My mother's father worked for a construction company building a pipeline. I haven't really researched that. She said the pipe was as big as a diameter that a man sitting on a horse could ride into the pipe. It was that huge. Eventually, the contract ended in Hemet (California). But they came through the San Jacinto Mountains. She remembered the Indians there singing and chanting.

AC: There’s a number of Reservations or 00:09:00one or two big ones there.

DR: Yes, Saboba.

AC: So well we are making our way to your camera, right? So we’ve got you owning your own company, you have your father involved in your business, and you’ve got a house.

DR: And a brand-new car.

AC: And you are working for the La Jolla Art--

DR: Center.

AC: As one of your clients.

DR: Then I expanded and I had clients. I was working seven days a week, 12 hours a day. No vacations, no holidays. But it was a lot of fun, there was a lot of money coming in. And for an uneducated kid--

AC: That becomes important.

DR: Yes.

AC: You could finally enjoy things--

DR: In fact I'll tell you how uneducated I was: I never understood English, I never understood Math. History and other stuff like that, I could understand. When I would do a contract—an estimate, I would do all round numbers, all whole numbers.

AC: Okay.

DR: At one point I could not subtract 1.99 from 2.00. I had no idea (Clausen and Rios talking over each other) how to move the figures--

AC: Well, you know you were a kid that needed to get money and wanted to leave poverty.

DR: Yeah, it was field work and I hated the field work. It was miserable. So even when I had my little business going, I decided--I knew a year in advance what I would be doing. I had so many contracts lined up that it became boring. The work just became boring. So I decided in 1962 to go back to night school and get my high school education. Which I did. I did in three years. I went five nights a week plus Saturdays plus TV shows--TV classes. I think I needed 32 credits to graduate, and I think I graduated with 48 credits. 00:11:00The counselor urged me to be class president, I did not have time for that. So then she bothered me so much, eventually I acquiesced to be Salutatorian for the high school class.

AC: Oh nice.

DR: When I started, I was in the 30-35% percentile. When I graduated, I was 98 percentile. It just came so easy to me.

AC: And boy, you sure did the right thing to get more education.

DR: More? Some education. I never had it--

AC: Well, you missed out on your childhood in a way.

DR: I never had a childhood. I never had a teenage life. When we were at home working, picking, we would never start school in September. It was November. Middle of November we started. And then holidays--then Thanksgiving came, you were off two weeks, then two or three weeks, Christmas came. And we’d (not) come back until the middle of January. And then we would leave school in 00:12:00May. I never started school and I never ended school.

AC: I had gone to the Latino Film Festival—I go every year with my friend. I can’t sit through too many movies but we saw one (film) that was a--that followed some children and their education, still today, and how the parents do yank them out of school and they’ll go to El Centro or wherever and the kids are constantly in flux. They still—happens to them, they—and then, the teachers have to try and test them and place them and it still goes on.

DR: Well that was me, that was our family. We had to survive, we had to put food on the table, clothes on our backs.

AC: Yeah, yeah.

DR: We owned our own home, we owned our own car. There was no bills there.

AC: Well that was, that was more than a lot.

DR: That’s a whole lot of story, because this house we’re living in now is part of my mother's wedding present. I can go into that if you want to later on. But I never 00:13:00wanted—and when I had my own little business, big family gatherings at the house, we had a nice house in San Diego. A lot of family gatherings and stuff like that. But I was bored with my job 'cause I would get up 5 o’clock in the morning. Six o’clock I was out the door and I wouldn’t get back until five or six o’clock. When I started Adult School, high school, I would get home at 5 o’clock, 5:30, take a shower, have a little snack, and go to school between 6 and 9. And then get home and study until 1-2 o’clock in the morning. I would do that for--

AC: Well see you had the desire, the drive--

DR: Yeah. Five, seven days. And then eventually I stopped working Saturday, used to go to Saturday school. So I graduated and then went to college and I was going to study Civil Engineering. Because it seemed to suit me. I was good in Math, I was good in Science, I was good in Chemistry.

AC: Did you start at community college?

DR: Yeah. Mesa College.

AC: Good school.

DR: Yeah. I was there a year and a half, and I took—I was taking pretty heavy classes. I went to take an easy class, a Health Ed. class. Taught by a short, stout, female teacher. No term paper, no mid-term, no quizzes, attendance is good, class participation. The only absolute requirement, concrete--you had to have a hobby at the age of 65 and over. She said, “None of my students going out working 30-40 years, retiring and become the wife or your spouse's pain in the ass,” running the house because she has been for 30-40 years. Chauffer, bookkeeper, cook, shopper, maintenance, raising the kids. She said, “My students will not be a burden to their spouses."

AC: (laughs) That is so great.

DR: (laughs) You will need a hobby. And I had to prove it. And it does not include rock climbing because at 60-70 years old you’re not going to be doing any rock climbing.

So in San Diego, at this here store on University where I went to, they had their camera counter right there where you walked in the front door. I’d often stopped and marveled at all these devices. I had heard about 35-millimeter (cameras), had no idea what it was. I had seen this camera with all these numbers on it. And different colored numbers. I often wondered what it all meant. Because growing up in Hanford we had no money for either film or camera or anything else, there were just no--no extras.

So I decided to take a adult (continuing education) class at Mid-way Adult High School in photography. I took it for one semester. Now in college I was carrying a 3.54 average. I got involved in photography, 00:16:00it just overwhelmed me. I could not get enough of it. I just started buying second-hand equipment.

AC: I don't know if that Adult School is still there. It was there for years.

DR: Probably not. At the time I was going out with a woman who I later married. She was taking an art class and I was taking photography on Wednesdays. I got so involved with photography I started buying used equipment, new equipment when I could afford it. I would buy 100-foot rolls of film and shoot that film in one week. I was just drawn into it.

AC: Wow.

DR: I was just mesmerized. I couldn't get enough of it, it was like an addict. And so I built a dark room in my mother's garage. At that point I had gotten married. Built the dark room in my mother's garage, I would go in at 4-5 o’clock in the morning, process film. 00:17:00Start printing and proofing and looking at my clock, I would have to be at school at 9 o'clock for a class, 10 o’clock at class--

AC: I tell young people and my son, go ahead and plan and take your classes but you don’t know what’s going to come your way. Like don’t get so, you know worry, worry, where’s the job, where’s my job going to be. I said “Stop!” It may come to you and I can’t wait to tell him about--’cause I see him tomorrow, but don’t wear yourself down with worry, you don’t know the twist and turns in your life. Look at that!

DR: Well, my mother had a saying that most students go to college to study to be a potato and they come out a yam. (both laugh)

So my grades plummeted. I would not go to school. I would try to bone up for a test. I would not show up for class. That last semester just was a disaster. Ended up getting I think a D 00:18:00average. 2.0 or 1.5, 2.0 average. Then I switched college, I decided, I told my wife "I think I want to do--” One of the people, while I switched colleges to study commercial photography, and I had the fortunate--

AC: You think?

DR: I had the pleasure of two teachers, and I talk about it all the time. Civil Engineering is what I really wanted to do but this photography just, as I said, I was just addicted to it. So I enrolled in this college and had Mr. Bill Dendle’s class in photography at City College and Jack Stevens who also taught the upper grades. And I was so fortunate to have Mr. Dendle as a teacher. And he would just--like an addict, just feeding me my 00:19:00poison with the knowledge. Oh god, he was fantastic.

My first semester there, I won the Sweepstakes Award and about 30% of the ribbons because we had a photo contest among the students. And the first day of class, about 35-40 people in the class, Mr. Dendle said, “I don't care; sit on the floor, sit wherever you want. By the end of this week there's gonna be half of you and by the of the month just going to be half of (that). At the year there will be maybe five or seven of you left.” And there were only ten of us left that started.

AC: Yeah. Yeah. So he knew you had to have the passion to survive.

DR: He was, he was--He had a shelf, it must have been twenty feet long by eight feet high full of photo books. And I would go ask him a question, 00:20:00if I had a problem or had a question, he said, “You know that it is a very good question. It's in the books here, why don't you find out. Look for it and find out the answers.”

AC: Interesting.

DR: And he would do that to me a lot.

AC: So he knew that if you would find it for yourself, it would have more value.

DR: Oh yeah.

AC: And to remembering and keeping--

DR: And, one day about noon, I’d finished my work in the darkroom and he came out and says, “Are you busy right now?” I said no. At this point I was twenty-nine, no twenty-six. I always felt old in class. Kids were 17-18-19 years old.

AC: Yeah. Returning students feel--

DR: I'm twenty-three, twenty-four, I’m feeling ancient. So I never mingled with students, fellow students.

So he came out to lunch and says, “What are you doing?” I say, “I just finished my dark room work.” He says, “Grab a camera and load it Kodalith film and go take a picture of the quad.” I’d never heard of Kodalith film, it's a graphics arts film. 00:21:00Normal speed of film is 100, 400. This was 6 and I had no idea what it was. So I went and got a 4 x 5 camera, loaded it. Thought I was going to take it--I got a light meter, took it to the quad and took a light reading. It was like a five-second exposure, wide-open on the camera. So I had to go back to get a tripod, went and took the picture, five-second exposures. Back in and processed the film. And I showed it to him and says “What do you want me to do with this?” He said, “Nothing, throw it away.” I said “Well what was that all about?” He said, “Some day when you're a professional, you will be called upon to do different assignments. You better be prepared for anything that comes up.”

AC: Wow.

DR: We had what's called the photographers bible. It was a book, maybe 5 x 7, by maybe three inches thick with every film, every chemical, every processing imaginable. And that became my bible. 00:22:00I would study that thing left and right.

Another thing, one year for Christmas vacation he asked me, “What are you doing for vacation?” Said not a whole lot. He says, “I want you--look up this doctor at a biology lab during Christmas vacation. Want you to shoot color slide, color negative, black and white and infrared film. Go to the doctor with it and ask him what he wants. So Christmas vacation I went, found him and he was doing an autopsy on a cadaver with about four or five students. And I had a cold that day. And they are tearing up this body apart--

AC: Oh dear god.

DR: They’re just carving into him and I am taking pictures all over. And I asked the doctor, “What do you want pictures of?” He said “Dendle said you would just come over, I’ve got no use for you.” (laughs) So I shot all those four types of film. 00:23:00So anyway I learned the man had apparently been an alcoholic. They took out his kidneys and his liver, (unclear) cirrhosis. Little five-foot girl riding her fingers along the tendon from her toes up to his hip and I couldn’t smell anything I had a cold that day. But I found out that your hair grows after you’re dead, because the cadaver's bald and it had quarter-inch fuzz on him. And he mentioned that to the students. Which I didn’t notice. His hair keeps on growing.

AC: And you had that--

DR: And the fingernails--

AC: On the photo. Lucky you!

DR: Yeah right. So after Christmas break I took it all to Dendle, all the proof sheets and all the negatives and everything. “Here's the—what do you want me to do with them?” He said, “Throw them away, I don't want ‘em! I don’t even want to see them.” But that was another lesson in that you’re going to be called upon to do—you don't know what you will be called upon to do. 00:24:00And his advice to me was curiosity. Never lose your curiosity. It will take you through--

AC: You think about journalism and for newspapers, yeah I mean you could--

DR: But I didn't study for newspapers.

AC: No, no, I know--

DR: I studied for commercial photography.

AC: But he had instincts that you—he didn’t know where you ended up.

AC: So he wanted to give you like the worst-case scenario.

DR: Right. yeah he wanted to prepare me for whatever came. So he came to me second semester, I think. He said, “How would you like a job working in a photo studio? They don't pay much, a dollar and half an hour. But you work any hours you want. Yopu work weekends, nights, whatever. You get the use of all the cameras, all their equipment, all their paper, everything.” Which was at the time photography was the second most expensive class in college. The first expensive class was welding. So I took that job 00:25:00for a photographer named Bob Boyd, who was another teacher, another instructor. The man was a phenomenal photographer. He worked for Reed, Miller and Murphy Advertising Agency. So I did all his processing, all his pictures. I sent out the color stuff to the labs, but everything else I did. I printed all my stuff, I shot all my assignments in the studio.

And like I said, I had just got married. Second--the third semester, Mr. Dendle came up to me and says “How would you like a job on a cruise ship?“ I said, “What are you talking about?” He says, “The Director of the Seven Seas College—Seven Seas University? College. They are touring East China, Japan, Vietnam, going down to Australia 00:26:00and up to North Africa for nine months. No pay. Room and Board, but you can take any class you want. Any you're gonna be the ship's photographer. You can take pictures of whatever anyone wants, of anything. You can take classes of anything you want.”

AC: Now at this time you had closed down your landscaping (business) or were you still--

DR: No.

AC: Did you turn it over to your dad?

DR: I had. I gave up most of the contracts. I saved some for my dad to work three--four days a week, three days a week at the most. He was getting ready to retire on Social Security.

AC: But for your own income?

DR: I worked weekends and in the photo lab.

AC: So you are still doing both.

DR: Yes. So I had just gotten married and I didn't think it was good to leave my new wife.

AC: For nine months.

DR: And my stepson. He was five years old. For nine months and with no income. 00:27:00No money coming in. So I didn't do that. But my last year, Bob Boyd who used to do filming, used to do commercials in San Diego, plus professional photography, commercial, helped him out a lot--asked me to go up to Hayward, California with him for a week. Now this is toward the end of the semester. To do a job up there, film developer for a week. So I talked to Mr. Dendle, and he said, “Yeah go ahead, no problem. Your year is completed, get out of here.” So I did. And I completed my classes there and I started looking for work. I had my brochure. I had my—what they call a—my book. They had a name for it. With some of my best photography.

AC: Like a portfolio?

DR: A brag. Called it a brag book.

AC: Oh okay.

DR: And I had it, put photos back-to-back in a binder – drill holes and put a All of my best photography was in there. My good photos were back to back in a binder—drill holes and put a spiral backing on it. I went all over town looking for work. Commercial studios, portrait studios, advertising agencies, all over town. And they all said the same thing. Your stuff is really, really good, but you don't have any experience. Go out and get a job for a year and come back.

So it was at this time that one of the salesman for a commercial photography sales came in. I asked him if he knew of anyone who wanted a photographer, I says I’m looking for a job. He said, “As a matter of fact, I came from Escondido and they are looking for a photographer in the Escondido newspaper.”

AC: Perfect.

DR: They got a newspaper in Escondido? 00:29:00(laughs) I had no idea, 'cause I was just San Diego. Had the San Diego Union, Evening Tribune. So on Sunday, we drove up here and got a newspaper from the stand. And they (San Diego Union) had gone letter press and they (Escondido Times-Advocate) were still using virgin paper. No recycled stuff. And It was bright white. And the type was just--and the printing was just amazing. I couldn’t believe it. And the photography! The pictures looked like they were actual photographs.

AC: You could cut them out and--

DR: And I was used to the letter press in San Diego and I couldn’t believe they had the offset press over here. Said, “oh my god!” And the town was little, I think the town (Escondido) was maybe only twenty-thousand at the time, 20-25,000.

AC: You know this is a great place to stop, are we good to stop?

DR: Oh yeah, sure. Sure, yeah.

AC: Wonderful. I’m gonna hit stop.