Jay Wilson and Les Compton

[00:04] JAY WILSON: Okay, you're good to go.

[00:07] LES COMPTON: I'm Jay Wilson. I am 80 years old. Today is May 19, 2024, and I am in the central library of the city of San Diego. And I will be interviewing Les Compton. We are very long time friends for about 70 years, maybe even a couple more than that.

[00:29] JAY WILSON: Hello, I'm Les Compton. I'm age 81. Yeah, same date, the 19th. And I'm up here in Claremont, California, just east of Los Angeles. And, yeah, Jay's right. We've been pals for seven decades. Plus.

[00:48] LES COMPTON: Time does fly. We both have gray hair. We definitely go way back. I think we first kind of got acquainted significantly in about the fourth grade. We were all in the orchestra. I was playing clarinet. Les was playing cello. Another good friend of ours was playing the trombone. Another good friend was another clarinet player. And we've all remained friends over all of these years.

[01:18] JAY WILSON: And where is it that you all grew up? Where was that?

[01:20] LES COMPTON: We were all in the. All native in San Diego. City of San Diego. I'm out of the group. I'm the only one that still in San Diego. But we all stay in contact with one another. Les, you've got to relay. The orchestra is one of the craziest things I ever.

[01:38] JAY WILSON: Oh, I got to tell you, that one. This is great. This is 6th grade, and this is the all county orchestra. And they stuck. I'm a cellist, and they stuck the cellist right up on the front of the stage. Right. And it was a very crowded stage, so. So the music stand was right on the edge. It was a six foot drop down below. And I reached over to adjust the music. The stand went over the edge. Ha. And I lunged to grab it. The cello's hand pin slipped, and a cello followed the stand 6ft down and shattered. The funniest sight you ever saw was our orchestra director went to watermelon, went down there, picked this thing up. And the horrified look on his face as he showed it, everybody was classic. That's the end of that story.

[02:32] LES COMPTON: But that was a good one. He was also the orchestra leader for us at Andrew Jackson Elementary School, where we all went.

[02:45] JAY WILSON: Yeah, I'm thinking back on, you know, El Jackson. And I think, according. I remember your mom saying that we actually were in first grade together, but we probably didn't know each other, you know, substantially until fourth grade, as you point out to. But that, that was. That was kind of fun. You remember if y'all got along right away. Uh, was it good first impressions?

[03:11] LES COMPTON: Oh, I think so. We're still friends. So I guess we just started off and.

[03:16] JAY WILSON: Yeah, must have worked. There was another pretty good hijinks. You remember the. The volkswagen with. With our friend Dick. Yeah, the water balloon incident.

[03:28] LES COMPTON: Oh, yes, yes. God, there were several incidents way back with the water balloons and even back to elementary school. I remember the thing, they were still flying those b 36s with their six propeller driven engines and they'd fly over our school periodically. And I still remember they tested air raid sirens back then. This was in the mid fifties. That's a long time to go.

[04:02] JAY WILSON: Yeah, I remember that they would howl on Mondays about noon.

[04:06] LES COMPTON: Yeah, exactly at noon. Periodically we diving under the tables.

[04:15] JAY WILSON: Yeah. I'm kind of curious. In high school, if I remember correctly, you were the manager for what, the cross country team, is that right?

[04:27] LES COMPTON: Yes. My athletic abilities ended up. Yes, I managed the cross country and the track teams, which was.

[04:36] JAY WILSON: Yeah, that was quite a lot of fun.

[04:38] LES COMPTON: That was my athletic ability those years. I remember we got to go to the Sun Kiss games up in Los Angeles at the big arena for the national indoor track meets. Watching the first person throw 60ft with a shot put, which is far less throwing now, and somebody running under a four minute mile and clearing 16ft in the pole vault with the old bamboo poles.

[05:12] JAY WILSON: Remember Arnold Tripp, fellow who set 9600 yard dash in high school?

[05:17] LES COMPTON: Yeah. Yes. He was the sole player on the football team, so to speak. Crawford High School did not have, shall we say, a strong presence on any, any field, but it would only come to light. And the same thing other than Dick doing a 25 foot long jump and managed to fall back. I remember. So it didn't count.

[05:49] JAY WILSON: Yeah, Dick Johnson was our, was, was the third member of a pretty close friendship there. Another one was a buddy named Al Marshall. That were the four of us. We stuck together pretty closely for. For decades. Jake, what about. I'm thinking about SeaWorld. I'm remembering a time we hopped in your Volkswagen and had to scream up to LA to drop off a bunch of flyers or something like that. Does that make sense?

[06:15] LES COMPTON: Yeah, we were. There was some promotion going on and it was. I think we had to go to a. It was one of the big corporations at SeaWorld. I was in the group sales department and we had a. But yeah, we were delivering brochures and I can't remember exactly, exactly where. Yeah, that Volkswagen lasted 23 years.

[06:34] JAY WILSON: They don't make it that way anymore.

[06:36] LES COMPTON: They do not make them anymore. The old Volkswagen. The old Volkswagen bug. But it was an interesting time. I mean, SeaWorld was fascinating just because it was. I mean, there was nothing like it anywhere in the world. It was the first really ocean theme theme park and opened it up. I mean, it was all of 40 acres at that point.

[07:05] JAY WILSON: We used to come out and visit you out there at SeaWorld.

[07:10] LES COMPTON: I was lucky I was still going to college and at USD, and we all had to take a lab class. And instead of cutting up a cat for a whole semester, I was able to do my lab through the veterinarian doctor Kenny at SeaWorld, and I was dissecting dolphin flukes and tails. And Carol, girlfriend at the time, now my wife, for almost 57 years, did all the artwork for me, so I got an a on the project.

[07:47] JAY WILSON: So let's see, we were roomies, I think about senior year in college, as I remember, for one summer.

[07:55] LES COMPTON: Yep.

[07:57] JAY WILSON: And remember it correctly, that was the summer of the Watts riots.

[08:01] LES COMPTON: Yes.

[08:02] JAY WILSON: Everything about that.

[08:03] LES COMPTON: Yeah, I remember that. Yeah.

[08:08] JAY WILSON: That was a long time back, but, yeah, the Watts riots.

[08:11] LES COMPTON: Yeah.

[08:11] JAY WILSON: And then. Then I headed off to graduate school from there and that. And then we had our conversations then were pretty much just by phone for about the next five years.

[08:21] LES COMPTON: Exactly, yeah.

[08:23] JAY WILSON: Can you all describe what the Watts riots were for folks that don't know?

[08:29] LES COMPTON: There was. Oh, God, boy, you're taxing. Texting the brain that it was in a. What shall we say? It was primarily of a black neighborhood, and I think there was problem with the police, and just obviously there was some racial concerns in there, and it just really erupted. I mean, it became kind of the first major incident of its kind in the nation. Buildings were burned. There were some lives lost. Yeah.

[09:09] JAY WILSON: Yeah, I'm remembering that. It was a particularly hot summer, and I think tempers were really short for lots of reasons, including the fact it was so darned hot out there on the streets. All started back. Do you have any other memories of living together? How did that go? Was there conflict? Did you all live well together?

[09:32] LES COMPTON: Yeah, we did, and that's where I think I designed. And we implemented the slingshot that was. I don't know what got us in the mood to make a slingshot, just to see what we could do. We were using surgical tubing and two by fours. There was a four foot. It was an eight foot two by four that was the length of the slingshot, and then a four foot two by four. That was the cross beam. And we attached, I think, eight different pieces of surgical tubing on it. The problem was that we put the crossbar on top of the main bar, and there you go. Tell you about using the.

[10:23] JAY WILSON: Yeah.

[10:24] LES COMPTON: How far we could shoot.

[10:26] JAY WILSON: So uh, Jay lived on the edge of a canyon. And I don't remember why I was there, but I was. And Jay took off to do something and I'm setting the, setting the beast up in the, in the backyard of Jay's place. Actually it was about, it was about. About 14ft long. It was two bolted together, a two by fours. Anyway, big deal. And I wanted to see how far I could toss the golf ball. So, you know, here it goes. It's all set up in the sling and I fire it. The doggone ball was a little bit low in the swing and so it bounced off that cross piece, came right back and hit me on the chin. And I was awfully lucky that it didn't hit any higher because I would have had a lot of dental work otherwise. Quite a surprise. Bad engineering.

[11:17] LES COMPTON: That was bad engineering. Yes, yes. And I remember we tried it at where Carol's house was at the. At the time and shot it over navajo road into the. Into the catholic school. Not realizing that that was open house water balloon. So somewhere there was an orange that landed in the middle of that we disassembled.

[11:40] JAY WILSON: Oh yeah, I. Good, good thing he spends been 50 years since we did all that. Well, Jay sporting a nasty bruise after that. I mean that must have been so painful after the. Oh, I was, I was the luckiest guy in the world because it glanced off the edge of my chin off on the side of. And I just had a cut. I think I still got a small scar there. But that was. It probably hit the hardest part of my head you could hit. So I was lucky there. And was that an interest of both of you all engineering at all or.

[12:25] LES COMPTON: No, not for me. My degree was in political science with a history and philosophy minority and that's what all marketing people do because I never used that portion. I ended up totally in the marketing world unless did some fascinating things. The engineering aspect.

[12:47] JAY WILSON: Well, you know, the engineering area. I actually graduated in chemistry and then physical chemistry in graduate school. But in California most of the jobs were not actually chemistry jobs. California was an aerospace and oil industry and other things, but definitely not a Dupont chemical company situation. The East coast was a lot of work, a lot of that occurred. And so I ended up getting a number of engineering jobs and eventually translated over to JPL after working at Occidental Petroleum for a while and. And then a Beltway bandit, if you will, in San Diego for a few years before moving on to on a JPL where I worked for like. Yeah, it was what was 28 years, I guess. And that's when I got involved in this Pathfinder project and the mission to Mars in 95, 96.

[13:50] LES COMPTON: And that's what really interested in me as far as asking, who would you like to do an interview with? And it was less because how many people do you know that were involved in directly making sure that the pathfinder landed on Mars?

[14:07] JAY WILSON: Yeah, that was, that was an interesting project. This was the first attempt to go back to Mars after the viking missions of the seventies. So, you know, about 19, 90, 92 or 93 right in there. The Pathfinder project started up and it was, uh, it was pretty interesting because we had to do it faster, better and cheaper. And most people will say faster, better and cheaper. Well, pick two. You can't have all three of those. But. But for some reason, we actually pulled off a faster, better, cheaper mission. It was, it was, it was, it was amazing. I guess the best part of this was when we landed, what happened was you were launched, you moved through space to Mars. And when you got to Mars, you've got a clamshell operation. You've got a rocket platform and a heat shield attached to it on the bottom. And as we came in to, you know, to drop the heat shield, put up, used a parachute in order to slow us down and get as close to the ground. And then the fun started because then you had to fire rocket motors to stop yourself in the air. And then we dropped the payload, which was in a gigantic balloon made out of Kevlar. And the darn thing rolled for a quarter of a mile before it stopped. And we were so happy to find out that things had actually landed safely because this was completely new. We had a whole bunch of new ideas that all worked together anyway, that that was kind of like the background on that without going into too much detail.

[15:58] LES COMPTON: How long did it survive up there?

[16:02] JAY WILSON: You know, I'm trying to remember. It landed. It lasted a lot longer. Jay Thandejde I thought it would or anybody else did, because usually what you did, you had to over design these things so that you would at least land and work for as long as you wanted things to work. I'm guessing. I'm guessing that it probably lasted for several weeks, but at this point, I really don't remember. It was a pretty small little rig. It was probably about the size of. Oh, I would guess it was about 20 inches long. A little tiny little dune buggy that ran around at very low speeds, took some pictures. The whole idea was just to prove you get back there without spending $5 billion, which. Which is just an overstatement of what the costs were, by far. We spent about 250 million total costs.

[17:02] LES COMPTON: But still fascinating, because he would call periodic, or I'd call him and say, well, I knew you had a test. Did the tests go well? And fortunately, all but once he reported, they all went well. The incident of when the parachute didn't open, I guess, properly, and.

[17:18] JAY WILSON: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jay, you're talking about the year I spent up in the Mojave desert at the China Lake Navy weapons Center. Who they. It turns out China Lake and JPL are sister organizations. They were set up by Caltech at the beginning of the second World War anyway, so they were more happy to help us. And I ended up working with a bunch of skunkworks guys there. And I don't know if you knew this, but one of the things that we did was we hauled our test platform about 7000ft up in the air, over the base, and then in the test area, dropped it. And in order for this thing to work out, there were four separate parachute deployments that had to work. Right. And that was a record. The guys up there told me that that was the most that they'd ever done up there in that organization in, like, a 50 year history. One of the times. Yeah. One of the chutes didn't open, and our payload fella 7000ft straight down into the desert and hit in an area that it was off limits. What had happened was that the helicopters had to keep moving pretty good speed in order to be able to keep lift, because the air was pretty rare at that altitude, and you had to consider payload as well. And so the result was that this. This one guy has to pull this lanyard to drop the payload, and the thing stuck. He couldn't. He couldn't get it loose, so he kept on pulling and kept on pulling. Pilot says, we're off range. Stop.

[19:13] LES COMPTON: Stop.

[19:14] JAY WILSON: This guy was so wildly. He just kept on pulling and finally released the thing. And then, of course, the chute failed, and we bombed the desert with our whole, whole experiment.

[19:27] LES COMPTON: Well, from science, the one thing that you've always been interested, obviously, the cello. And I think you're still in the Claremont Symphony Orchestra.

[19:38] JAY WILSON: Yeah, I joined the orchestra nearly 50 years ago, when I was in my thirties, and had the marvelous opportunity to. To sit next to a woman who had been born in the late, very late 1890s, believe it or not. And she was an absolutely marvelous cellist. And when she retired, actually, she passed away. I took the job as principal over and was principal there. For 20 years. And then a good friend of mine named Anne came along, and she and I shared the job for a long time. And now. Now that I'm, like 80, I've given that up. So I sit next to her, but she's the boss now. Yeah, we've played hundreds of concerts over that time. I can't imagine how many thousands of hours I've spent rehearsing that. It's been a lot.

[20:35] LES COMPTON: I always want to ask, do you still have the same cello you started with?

[20:40] JAY WILSON: Yeah, I do. I. Well, I've only. I've had two Jay One of them was kind of like a plywood cello, and actually three, that was the plywood or cello that got broken when I went and went off the stage. Ha. And then I ended up with another one that lasted for a while. And then when things got serious, I ended up with a wonderful gift from my parents. It was the cello. I still have. It belonged to the principal cellist of the San Diego Symphony, a gentleman named Paul Anderson. And I still have Paul's old shallow. And it's.

[21:19] LES COMPTON: It's.

[21:19] JAY WILSON: It's survived. Well, it's. It's. It's several centuries old at this point.

[21:27] LES COMPTON: I'm glad it stayed together. It's difficult.

[21:31] JAY WILSON: Well, yeah, all you gotta do is bump it wrong. If you bump it wrong, you know, those things are fragile, so they'll break pretty easily. Well, to give you an example, one time we were outside, on an outside stage, and the wind was blowing a little bit, and I was getting ready. I was stepping over something, and the wind caught the cello just a little bit, and the side bumped into the sole of my shoe, the hard part, and I caved in a little bit at the side of the instrument. I had to get it repaired. It was just a little bump. Didn't take much.

[22:09] LES COMPTON: So how's retirement?

[22:13] JAY WILSON: It's fine. That's a good question. I'll have to ask you about that in a minute, too. Yeah, I'm just. I got hooked on doing genealogy. Chase Jason's on my family's history and genealogy, and I've spent about the last twelve years quite a. Quite a bit of time searching things down. Learned a lot about it. So I've traced. I've traced family history back to the 16 hundreds in Norway and Denmark, as well as the east coast. And it's really been quite a bit of fun. One of the. One of the guys that I chased down apparently had a pirate for a, for a father, and he was. He was a pirate captain. Operated out of Morocco in the, in the, in the mid 16 hundreds. Quite interesting. The guy actually ended up being an admiral of pirates operating out of a place called Soleil. And apparently it was liked by some of the, I'm going to call them satraps, for, for lack of a better word right now, who ran the country off and on during that period? Well, Jay, I've been doing a lot of talking. I need to get back and ask you a couple things. Then what do you think? What would you say is your favorite thing that you did when you were working?

[23:43] LES COMPTON: Probably the most unique thing was at SeaWorld. I got to go on a couple of collecting trips, but the most fascinating one was I was responsible for babysitting Gigi, the gray whale. I had the 08:00 p.m. to 12:00 p.m. shift, but we had sent a ship down to do some exploration in the scammon lagoons, which is where the gray whales usually migrate to and where the babies are born. And someone had harpooned this baby whale, and they decided to bring it back to SeaWorld and see if they could rescue it. And so they had to make sure that it didn't roll over and that we could keep the blowhole above the water line in this big, big tank where it was, and they would, would feed it. And unfortunately, it did not make it. But there was a gallant effort for several months to eat this creature alive. Nobody had really made whale baby formula at that point, so it was quite a deal of having to figure out exactly what would work for the whale and see if they couldn't heal it, but the wound was just too damaging.

[25:08] JAY WILSON: Where was that?

[25:09] LES COMPTON: I mean, they had this big kind of almost a rag thing along with around, and I, you would have to hold both ends of the rag that went around it to make sure that it didn't roll over. Those creatures are not small.

[25:25] JAY WILSON: Oh, no. Jay. What, what was, what was the wound?

[25:29] LES COMPTON: It had been harpooned. It looked like a harpoon or something had gone into it.

[25:33] JAY WILSON: Oh, yeah. Oh, boy.

[25:36] LES COMPTON: Yeah. It was, it was most unfortunate. They ended up getting this second one that they also called Gigi. And she was there for over a year. I mean, she was growing, you know, like half an inch a day or something. It was just amazing. And then they released. Released her back, and she did well. They had a transmitter on her.

[25:56] JAY WILSON: That's a new story.

[25:57] LES COMPTON: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[25:58] JAY WILSON: I don't remember that story. That, that's, that's a.

[26:01] LES COMPTON: That was a fascinating place to work because the behind the scenes, you were.

[26:06] JAY WILSON: There for like, what, 20 years? Something like that. Oh, you were there for about 20.

[26:11] LES COMPTON: Years, is that right? I was there from. I started a month before they opened. I think I'm employee number 2000, or, excuse me, 209. And I started in 64, and I left in 75. And then went over, was offered a job to run the marketing and group sales and entertainment department for the Zoological Society of San Diego. So, which included the zoo. And at that point, it was called the wild Animal park up in Escondido. That was also. That was amazing.

[26:42] JAY WILSON: You reminded me of. I had a job at the zoo when I was 16. It was a wonderful job. Paper picker. I worked. Summer job. I worked from three in the afternoon till seven at night. And I got. All I did was I walked around with this paper grabber and grabbed trash and threw it in this sack that I was carrying with me at the. And it was a union job, so I got paid pretty well. The good part about it, though, was that I got to walk around the whole zoo. And as a result, I listened to all the bus drivers talking about, you know, the incredible animal collection there, and got to know quite a bit about all the animals who were there. I think probably my favorite thought from that era was that at one point, they were redesigning the elephant enclosure. And so the result was they had a couple of elephants that were actually standing, uh, quite accessible. You know, they were chained and they were very well behaved. And, uh, I actually got to go over and, uh, rub this, this, this elephant's, uh, forehead right above its nose. I could barely reach it. This gigantic, you know, six ton elephant or so. And it was great. The elephant said, basically, well, hello there. And that was pretty nice.

[28:15] LES COMPTON: There was an old story of Doctor Henry Wegerforth He actually founded the zoo following the 1915 exposition in San Diego. And he decided that they needed to do something with the animals. And at one point, that he had an elephant enclosure, and they needed to rebuild it a number of years ago. And when they started to dismantle it, they couldn't figure out why I. Normal destruction of the building was so difficult. And Doctor Wergerforth was always looking for something unusual to do. It turned out that Santa Fe railroad was putting new rail down, and some of their rail kept disappearing. Well, instead of rebar for the elephant enclosure, Doctor Wegerforth decided that the. The railroad rails, the big steel rails, would work even better. So that's where the Santa Fe railroad rail that was missing all the time ended up at the zoo. And the elephant enclosure that was interesting because a lot of people don't know that the vegetation there is worth far more than the animals. Doctor Wegerforth when he was expanding the zoo, he bet somebody that he could bring back a pink elephant. And they said, if you bring back a pink elephant, he said, I'll pay for the trip. So just before they unloaded the elephant, Henry, Doctor Wegerforth decided that to make it pink, he'd powder the elephant, powdered the elephant pink, walked it down the plank. And I guess the guy was just so amazed and thought, not that he had been pranked, but it was so creative. He paid for the trip. And when I got there, the staff there couldn't figure out I was interested in what's going on behind the scenes. First thing I want to do was the horticulturist, Ernie Chu. I said, well, show me what you do here. What are you doing? He said, well, how come you're marketing guy? Why are you interested? I said, I'm just interested. And he told me, he said, at that point, when they started to put the vegetation initially in the zoo, Doctor Wegerforth would walk around and he'd take his cane out and put a little hole in the ground, put some seeds in and cover it up. There was no plan on where this plant should go or that plant to go. And when I was there, and this started in 75, that Ernie was starting to put the vegetation and move things around so that there was the forest plants and the desert plants and deforestation. And I was a major project which has worked out really, really well.

[31:00] JAY WILSON: Did I ever tell you, did I ever tell you about the, the incident that occurred where one of, one of the guys who I knew was killed by a black panther at the zoo?

[31:15] LES COMPTON: No.

[31:15] JAY WILSON: What had happened was, yeah, this pretty, this is quite a story, actually. Uh, after, uh, after being a paper picker for several years, I ended up being a mop jockey at one of the big, uh, one of the big hamburger stand areas. And one of them was down at the, that the, the bottom of what they referred to as, uh, I think it was Dog and Cat Canyon. And, uh, right across the street from the hamburger joint, uh, was, it was a big gun, big cage. And there was a black panther in there. And the design of the cage was it was split in half by, and of course it was split in half and it was entirely fenced by, by, by chain link fence. And so there was a chain link wall that ran through the middle of the enclosure from one side to the other. And there was a blockhouse that sat astride or right in the middle of that. That middle chain link fence and had a door that opened to both sides. You know, they had two doors, one open to the backside, one to the front. And so what happened was that the guy was working there who had to go in and clean up the thing, did not check to make sure that the panther was in the front side before he closed the door. Net result was he went in there and the panther walked out of the. Out of the blockhouse and attacked him. And the guy who had replaced me, because I was not at the hamburger stand working that day, he was my replacement. He had. He went up there and ended up sticking a bamboo pole down the panther's throat in order to keep it from attacking him so he could drag this poor fellow out. And just by luck, I wasn't the guy who was at that stand that day. I don't know if you heard that story before.

[33:16] LES COMPTON: No. All the time I'd been there, that one was never told.

[33:22] JAY WILSON: People don't talk a lot about those incidents, but. But, you know, you're talking about wild animals, so things are going to happen.

[33:29] LES COMPTON: It does, yeah. I mean, you take a look at the precautions, particularly at the wild animal park, which is huge with everything roam, everything roaming free. I mean, it's like animals. And you'd see the countryside in Africa, everything romes. Rome is free.

[33:46] JAY WILSON: But, yeah, things are a lot better now. What I was talking about, of course, was at the main zoo down Balboa park. And, you know, I'm thinking back on it, you know, the place was really well run. It was just. It's just that nothing's perfect.

[34:01] LES COMPTON: No.

[34:02] JAY WILSON: You know, and it caused the problem that day.

[34:08] LES COMPTON: So how's the. How's the family? How's David? He lives fairly close to you.

[34:16] JAY WILSON: Well, our kids are fine. Laura has now graduated, if you will, into a consulting law position for a firm that deals with. With. I guess the best way to put it is physical therapy and related issues. But Dave, our son, his boys are doing well. Jay Brody, he just had his 13th birthday a while back, and I'm so proud of that. Boyden, he got it. He got an award just a couple of weeks ago as student of the year at his. At his junior high school, you know, and he's really, really a good kid. He's also straight a student, so I'm really proud of him. And his little brother is six. That's Brixton and old Brixie. You know, he's in kindergarten, and he's doing fine. So, yeah, Dave's, Dave's family's fine. Of course. Laura is basically a world traveler who finances her adventures with her job. So they're all fine. They're doing well. Your kids are doing what exactly now?

[35:43] LES COMPTON: Yes. Well, Sean, he's in West Virginia and working for, he's the it guy for them. And, yeah, they've got clients. I mean, you drive 3 hours out of West Virginia and you're in different states. I mean, it's just such a far cry from California. And so he's working on, he was, he got a call when he was working for another firm and he said he thought the guy that called him was a headhunter. And he said, I looked up his name and found out he was the president, founder of Comex. And so Sean said, I called him back and he said, I've talked to three different major companies that we do business with and told them I was looking for somebody. And they all told me, I need to hire you, so I think we better meet. He said, I need to start this new department, but somebody can oversee our installation of computers and systems and phone systems. So that's what he's doing. They've got like 8000 clients all over the place from colleges to small businesses. So it's really, it's really interesting.

[37:00] JAY WILSON: Yeah. Our son Dave's in the same field. He, he works for central computing out in San Bernardino county. And I, they seem to like him so they just pile more work on him. Pretty typical.

[37:19] LES COMPTON: Yeah. Well, things are doing, things are doing well. It's fun to watch them grow up and then all of a sudden, my gosh, we all have great pair here and grandchildren.

[37:31] JAY WILSON: Yeah, I noticed that. Our, our timeframe is, we think in terms of weeks. You know what? Another week. Bye. Not, not a day, but a week at a time. Boom. They're just going one by one and the kids are growing up really quickly.

[37:47] LES COMPTON: Yeah. You know, you're getting older. When you're, when you have grandchildren who graduated from college.

[37:54] JAY WILSON: Is there any y'all would like to say directly to your kids or grandkids, you know, any advice or anything that you'd like to say directly to them.

[38:08] LES COMPTON: All are doing well. I mean, it's just the fact that you're watching your family grow and mature and prosper and then you end up with grandchildren and my gosh, that's just amazing to see that. Time flies. We're on the downside of the clock, so to speak, at this point. But we're all doing well. They're doing fine. So.

[38:37] JAY WILSON: Yeah, well, I guess if I were going to give anybody any advice, you know, advice is a, is a, is a touchy subject. And just in general when you're talking about family, but our family gets along really well. And I guess I would just pass on to my grandson, Brody, that. Keep it up, Brody, as far as I'm concerned, you're doing just fine. So work hard, use your head, stay out of trouble, and if you like it, you find something that sounds good to you, go to college and make it work. So that's the, that's all the advice I can come up with.

[39:24] LES COMPTON: Brody, very fun. Wasn't he born very premature?

[39:30] JAY WILSON: Yeah, he was an awfully small little guy when he was born, but he's come along fine. He's kind of a miracle child in the sense that he hasn't suffered any ill effects.

[39:41] LES COMPTON: That's really neat. So you got any trips planned?

[39:48] JAY WILSON: Well, we like to chase around with our daughter when she's a triathlon participant on a regular basis. So when she goes to one of these areas, we'll pack our bags and go up with her. So that's what, that's what, that's the plan. Yourself? Anything?

[40:08] LES COMPTON: No. Well, we've got a plan. We've got, you know, Travis is in Vegas. We get family in Vegas. So we're going to be heading over there probably this, this summer to see how everybody's, everybody's doing. We've got, yeah, I'm, two of his daughters are living with us. Wages in San Diego and California are much better than they are in Vegas. So now, it's interesting you mentioned you have grandkids staying with you. Everybody thinks, oh, good, you know, they're four or five years old, visiting. No, these are, these are adults. So it's really, really fun. So it dates you in a hurry.

[40:44] JAY WILSON: Yeah, it does. Well, Jay, I've really enjoyed this opportunity to share a conversation like this. It's been fun.

[40:53] LES COMPTON: Yeah. I mean, this was amazing. I had the opportunity. I said, well, this is something we've got to do. It's got to be with you. And there are just so many good things and memories with you and with the rest of our little group there that has existed for decades. And I think, I mean, all of us, we're married or have been married for over 50 years, still married to number one. And that's unique. As you go and talk to people today, they're just amazed. And particularly when your whole group of close friends are in the same situation, still married to number one. It's made a good life for all of us, I think.

[41:35] JAY WILSON: Well, the words of Star Trek's mister Spock, live long and prosper, Jay.

[41:41] LES COMPTON: Exactly. Yes. Yeah. So, anyway, we're probably pretty close to time, I think.

[41:49] JAY WILSON: Yeah. Y'all have done great. Any. Anything else you'd like to say? It's perfect. We can end it here.

[41:58] LES COMPTON: This is fine. This. This has just been a fascinating experience.

[42:01] JAY WILSON: Yeah.

[42:04] LES COMPTON: Listen, say hi to Joy and Carol says hi.

[42:09] JAY WILSON: I'll do that, Jake.

[42:12] LES COMPTON: We'll make another trip up. All right, Marvin. Bye.

[42:15] JAY WILSON: Great.

[42:15] LES COMPTON: All right, take care.

[42:16] JAY WILSON: Give me 5 seconds, and then I'll pause the recording and just stay right there.

[42:21] LES COMPTON: Last 1 second.