‘If you wanted milk, you bought a cow; if you wanted eggs, you bought chickens.’

John Beyer fought for a better water system in the ‘50s and battled City Hall for affordable housing and lower utility rates for senior citizens. He is a practical man who campaigns for fruit trees and vegetable gardens rather than ornamentals and landscaping. But long before he got involved in local politics, Beyer was a struggling immigrant. Beyer and his wife, Myrtle, live in Thousand Oaks.

I was born the 6th of January, 1901, in what is now East Germany. I came over to the United States in 1922 mostly for economic reasons. Just like anybody else, I thought the minute you got off the boat there would be a million dollars waiting for you and all you have to do is pick it up: The grass is always greener on the other side. But it didn’t take me long to find out that I still had to mow the lawn.

I had a relative on my mother’s side of the family, he owned 695 acres. He was a farmer, so I worked on his farm for about eight months. Then I heard about the Ford Motor Co., they were getting five dollars a day, so I thought I might as well get some of that prosperity, so I went to Detroit.

I was on the production line. I don’t think the slaves had it as bad as we had it. Eight hours, you stand at the assembly line, take a piece of material, put it in the machine, press the button with your foot and take it out. You did that for eight hours with 20 minutes for lunch. There were times I could have keeled over.

I decided there was no future in that industrial city. When we returned to California, I was hired as a carpenter. I knew how to drive nails, but that was about the extent of my carpentering. At noon, the foreman came over and handed me a check and said, “I knew damned well you’re not a carpenter.”

I kept on going, and the next job I had as a carpenter, I lasted one day. I improved, I watched what they were doing. As time went on, I managed to stay in the carpenter business. I got odd jobs, and we made it. In the height of the Depression, I was getting a dollar a day.

Gradually, we improved. In 1933 there was a gas station available on what is now the Ventura Freeway near the county line. The first day we moved in there with a big sign out front, Under New Management. My wife and I stayed in that store all day long. You know what the total income was on that day? Five cents. We sold one Hershey bar with nuts to a salesman. I think he felt sorry for us.

In 1938 we bought property in Thousand Oaks. The property was clear and I wanted to borrow $300 from the bank to build a house. They said I was a poor risk because I was only making $25 a week with a family of five. It was only through the efforts of my employer that I borrowed the money.

First I built the garage. I thought, we’re going to live in the garage, the five of us in a two-car garage about six months, and by that time I’ll have the house built. We camped in that garage for two years. It wasn’t bad in the summer because we had five acres to get out of each other’s way, but when it was raining I tell you our nerves kind of got strained at times. We survived.

We had farm animals. If you wanted milk, you bought a cow; if you wanted eggs, you bought chickens. The garbage disposal was our hog. Of course we had the pen, he wasn’t under the sink. The kids griped and griped because they had to do the chores. Now they tell us, “I know we griped, but we didn’t know how well off we were. We had open space to roam. Now what do we have to offer our kids? The living room and a television and a little 2-by-4 yard, that’s all we have to offer them.”

Eventually, I had to sell some of the property because of the taxes. The last year, it took five months of my gross income just to pay the taxes. We made money on it. I think we bought it for $450, and we sold it for $125,000. When we left that property, all of us had tears in our eyes. For six months, neither one of us could drive by that property without getting a lump in the throat. We bought that for our home with no intentions of leaving. But then, that is the price you pay for prosperity.

FO