Marian Perl
Marian Perl was born in St. Louis, Missouri, where her father served as a doctor with the Veterans Administration at Jefferson Barracks. When she was three the family moved to Des Moines, Iowa, living on a VA hospital reservation, and when she was ten they came to Dallas in 1941. She grew up in East Dallas, on the last block of Swiss Avenue adjacent to Lakewood, where very few Jewish children lived. She attended J.L. Long Junior High and Woodrow Wilson High School, where she was the only Jewish student in her graduating class of eighty. She rode a bus with a handful of other children from the Lakewood Theater to Temple Emanu-El Sunday School, then located in South Dallas.
Encouraged by her father, a brilliant and somewhat eccentric man who insisted his daughters be able to earn their own living, Marian pursued higher education. She attended Mills College in Oakland, California, spent one year at SMU, then returned to Mills to graduate. She went on to the Columbia School of Social Work, then called the New York School of Social Work, earning her master's degree in 1954. She specialized in adoption and foster care, but unable to find such work in Dallas, she joined Jewish Family Service, becoming its first permanent master's-degreed social worker under director Bernie Goldstein. She also served as social worker at Golden Acres two days a week, where she had interned in 1953.
Much of Marian's early work involved resettling the last Holocaust survivors from displaced persons camps and successive waves of immigrants, including North African Jews from Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt, finding them apartments and jobs with the help of interpreters and volunteers. She married Ito Perl in 1960 and later returned to work part-time, eventually joining Golden Acres full-scope at the invitation of executive director Herb Shore, whom she deeply admired. She handled intake, admissions, casework, counseling, and staff supervision, adding hours as her children grew, and retired in 1997. She remembered Golden Acres as an intimate, warm home in its early years and treasured stories of the residents she served across her long career.
Full Transcript
All right, this is Bob Zlotke on behalf of the Jewish Historical Society of Dallas, interviewing Marian Pearl. This is February 7, 2001. We are at Marian and Ito Pearl's home at 133-37 Purple Sage in Dallas. Mary Ann, where were you born and where did you grow up? I was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Lived at Jefferson Barracks, where my father was doctor with the VA. And then we moved to Des Moines, Iowa when I was three, where I lived on the VA hospital reservation. And when I was ten, we moved to Dallas. Okay. Did you ever live in Fort Worth? Never. Never did live in Fort Worth.
So at the age of ten you came to Dallas, then you You finished out your grade school and then went to high school in Dallas? I came here my last year, well actually it wasn't my last year in grade school, but that was the year that they added the 12th grade to the Texas public schools and everyone below a certain grade was skipped a grade. So I was skipped to my last year of grade school, and then I went to JL Long Junior High, and I went to Woodrow Wilson High School. Is Woodrow Wilson High School still Woodrow Wilson, or is that now Hillcrest High?
No, no, no, no, no. I lived in East Dallas. I lived in the last block of Swiss Avenue. It's now a historic district. And we were right adjacent to Lakewood. Almost very, very few Jewish kids in that. In your neighborhood? In that neighborhood I went to Temple Emanuel Sunday School which was in South Dallas at the time and we had a bus that picked us up at the Lakewood Theater every Sunday all half dozen of us I was the only Jewish student in my graduating class from high school. Really? If Woodrow Wilson High? I was a midterm graduate. There were 80 of us, and I was the only Jewish student.
I think in the class before that was a June class. I don't think there were more than three or four or five Jewish kids. Was that because the Jewish children had migrated to someplace else or just wasn't it? The Jewish population at that time, I moved here in 1941. I was ten years old. And at that time the bulk of the Jewish population was in South Dallas without any question. That's where all the synagogues, all, we didn't have a lot. That's where Temple Emanuel was and the Orthodox and the conservative. When they started leaving South Dallas, the move was north. I remember there never were very many in the Lakewood area.
I remember when one of our friends moved to Woodland Drive, which is about one or two streets maybe north of Northwest Highway. We couldn't imagine why they'd want to live so far out. I mean that was, we couldn't imagine it. But the Jewish population at that time was in South Dallas moving out to Highland Park and out Give me an idea, as you remember, what were the Jewish activities that you might have participated in when you were going through high school? I participated in very little. I really was somewhat isolated because I didn go to school with any of the kids that I went to Sunday school with And I wasn a tremendously sociable outgoing sort of person I was a little shy, and I was invited to some of the parties they had out from Sunday school, the kids that lived in South Dallas and Highland Park.
But really, I was fairly isolated. I really didn't do very much in the way of Jewish anything. Were there ACA and the kind of organizations that we have now? I certainly wasn't a part of it. Were you bat mitzvah here in Dallas? Oh, goodness gracious, no. Temple Emanuel was classical reform. I grew up in classical reform. If parents wanted their child to become bar mitzvah, they had to go to Shareth Israel. We didn't have that at Temple Emmanuel when I was born. We also did not blow a shofar on my holy days. They blew a trumpet. Oh, yes, yeah. Nobody could blow the shofar? They didn't.
I'm sure there were plenty of people that could, they just didn't. Did you have a choir at services at that time? Yes, we had a paid non-Jewish choir. All of them were non-Jewish? Yeah, I see. I don't remember that there were many people. I may be wrong, I was a kid then, but I remember it being a small paid choir. Of course, the way I remember things may not be entirely accurate, but that's the way I remember it. When you finished high school, you went off to college? I went to, most of my friends went to the University of Texas. Being a somewhat perverse kid, I didn't want to go to the University of Texas.
My mother kept a room reserved for me for four years in the dormitory down at University of Texas, hoping that I'd end up there. but I went to Mills College in Oakland, California for two years. I came back and went to SMU one year and returned to Mills and graduated And I went from there to graduate school in New York the Columbia School of Social Work which at that time was called the New York School of Social Work. I spent two years there and graduated in 1954. My father was a man of some eccentricity, a brilliant man, but somewhat eccentric, but he said to his daughters and to me in particular, you may go to school as long as you want, I will pay for it, as long as you come out with a degree in something with which you can earn a living.
You must not ever depend on being supported by someone else. And he was really way ahead of his time. I don't know that that's, maybe you would consider that eccentric, but I think that's just good. He was way ahead of his time. Because in my day, my friends went to the University of Texas, came home and went to work at Neiman Marcus. Neiman Marcus was the finishing school. And all, many of our better known citizens in the Jewish community worked at Neiman Marcus when they finished. I didn't. I got a degree in social work. Well, tell me, what brought you into social work? When you went away to college, did you have that in mind?
No. When I went away to college, I wanted to be a zoologist, and I made a B in the class, and that just blew me away. I switched majors. Somebody failed to give very good academic counseling, and I ended up getting a degree in psychology with which you cannot earn your living. So I had to find something that I could keep on doing so that I could get a degree in something that I could go out and work. So when you left Mills and came and did your one year at SMU, were you headed towards social work at that time? No. Were you getting your degree in psychology?
I'll be honest about it. I think the reason I chose social work is to get into the Graduate School of Social Work at Columbia University. I did not have to take the GRE. They did not have that as a requirement and I hated testing. And that was one thing that I knew I'd go into some kind of human services of some sort, but I think that probably was the thing that swayed me. Very often we make decisions when we are young based on less than solid foundations, but I certainly don't regret it. And then how long did you go to New York? It was a two-year program to get a master's degree, and then I came back to Dallas.
Now you had a master's degree in social work. I had a master's degree in social work. At that time, my father had retired from the B.A., and they had moved to Fort Worth, which was my mother's home. home. At least it was her home from the time she came from Europe as a senior in high school, and her parents lived there. So I went into an apartment in Dallas with my parents' apprehension about those days. That was not terribly common either. I lived alone in my own department and it worked out. And when you sought employment, tell me what you did. I had majored. What was available for social work?
My specialty was adoption and foster care. I could not get a job in adoption and foster care here in Dallas. So I applied to Jewish Family Service and I was hired there, which is a family counseling agency I was really their first master degree social work permanent employee I had worked there as an intern between my first and second year at Corbya School of Social Work. That was when Jewish Family Service and the Federation were on Potahantus Street out in South Dallas across from City Park. Really? We were in a Jewish Family Service, was in a little prefab building by the side of the Federation, JCC, whatever, the building.
We're talking in the middle 1950s, are we? I came back in, in 53 was when I did this three month internship in between my first and second year of graduate school. That's where I met Herb Shore. He was housed in that little prefab building because that's the year they started building Golden Acres. Golden Acres opened in 53 or 54. And when I came back to work and went to work for Bernie Goldstein at Jewish Family Service, I was assigned to Golden Acres two days a week as their social worker. Tell me who Herb Shore was. Herb Shore was the executive director of Dallas Herb for Jewish Age.
And Bernie Goldstein? Bernie Goldstein was the director of Jewish Family Service. Okay. When you, at that time at Jewish Family Service, when you were there, what were generally the activities? It must have been small, I would guess. You were the only, other than Bernie Goldstein, you were the only master degree social worker? I was. He added others. At that time when I came back in 54, they had moved to Browder Street. We were resettling the very last of the DP camps. A lot of Holocaust survivors who had not been settled were still being settled in 54 And I did a lot of that And successive waves of immigrants We had the North African Jews from Algiers and Tunisia and Egypt and we had the, oh, what were they, not Czechoslovakian, the, I have forgotten which wave that was, but we settled successive waves of immigrants.
In those days, we were not getting Russian immigrants. That was a long time later. and I also spent two days a week at Golden Avers. I was their social worker and handled their intake as well. Let me ask you, in terms of settling the Holocaust people, just out of curiosity, do you have any remembrance of how many at that time were coming into the Dallas area? And they were settling in Dallas? Yeah, we were still getting the, obviously they had had more before I came to work there, but when I came in 54, and we were still getting the remains of those who were languishing in DP camps.
And numbers, I don't know numbers, but it was a significant part of my job. I remember in those days it was just me and Bernie Goldstein and then we had another worker and we didn't have the same support systems. I used to find the apartments. I used to find the jobs. We didn't have the vocational that they have now and the resettlement department they have now for the Russians and so forth. Could these immigrants, were they by the way immigrants going to be, what was their citizenship to be when they came in? They became citizens They were just immigrants as they came in The ones that settled here from Holocaust survivors pretty much stayed here The successive waves that we got, a lot of them ended up going to other areas where they found more people of their own, from their own background.
When they were able to get away, they left. I was around long enough to see many of these Holocaust survivors in their days of Golden Acres when I was then working at Golden Acres. I remembered them from when they were young and I was young, and I remember their young children who were now grown. It was an interesting full circle. How did you communicate with them? Could they speak English? No, and we had interpreters. And we had a lot of volunteers who helped a great deal and took people to employment interviews and doctors and children to school. And of course the children learned English very quickly.
But I regretted that I did not speak Yiddish. It would have been extraordinarily useful to me. But my parents spoke Yiddish in the home only until the children were able to start picking it up. And then they quit speaking. And so I never did speak Yiddish. And we had all kinds. I remember one of our volunteers, I won't mention her name, but it was so funny. She lived in France as a child and then left when the war came. She went to South America. I used her as a-with our North African Jews, they spoke French, Tunisian and Algerian. I used her as an interpreter and volunteer, and I sent her with one family to plan parenthood.
She came back and she said, You can't use me like that again. You have to understand, my French stopped when I was about 10 years old. I did not know the words for the things that I needed to be interpreting. It was very funny. Well, tell me, you were also working part-time at Golden Acres at that time. I was on, yes, I was assigned two days a week to Golden Acres. Okay. Give me an idea for the record. What was the environment at that time in Golden Acres, when we were in the 1956, 54, 56 timeframe? In the, yeah. Where were you located? Golden Acres, where it is now.
Where it is now, on Centerville Road? In those days, first of all, it was much, much smaller. Golden Acres has been added to, you know, it's grown like top seed just hither and yon. They kept going up and out. When Golden Acres started, everyone there was ambulatory. They didn't accept people with terminal illnesses. they didn't, they, you had the ambulatory. In the days that Golden Acres started, they admitted to the nursing home, those people that years later they would be admitting to their apartments. It was small, the staff, there was staff that actually lived on premises, we all ate in the dining room. It was very different, it was really a very intimate, warm environment.
Herb Shore in his young years was a real visionary. He was so inspirational to those that worked for him and with him that we all assumed that he would not be with us forever at that We thought he would end up secretary of HEW. I mean, this was an amazing man in his young years. How many residents would we be talking about here? Well, when they started, when they very first started, I'm sure that there's a lot of oral histories that document this. There was a home out in South Dallas where they held services, and for those that were observant of the Sabbath and didn't want to walk, They would spend the night, and then they ended up with having people that were actually living in this house.
And all of those folks, that became, that was the kernel of the first population of Golden Acres. I don't know what the capability was when they first opened, 30, 50, I don't know. Was Herb Shore the first director, professional director? Yes, he built it. He was brought to Dallas for that purpose. Were all the residents Jewish at that time? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. It was for the Jews and it had to be for the Jews. Yeah. Was there any government aid or financing? I would imagine. I don't remember. Let me put it this way. I don't remember a time that there wasn't. Now, whether there was or not, but I don't remember a time that there wasn't some government financing.
And as it grew, what, there was more brick and mortar added over there? Absolutely. It grew. We added stories went up and wings went out. And you expanded the scope of people who could come in there? As the years went on, the population became older and sicker and poorer. In recent years the non population has grown enormously and there are many reasons for that I think that's something I don't need to get into. I haven't been at Golden English for four years now. I retired four years ago. I was going to ask you what role the government played through the years. Presumably it's a bigger role today than what it was early on.
The face of long-term care has changed over the years. It is very different now from what it was 30 years ago. It's very different, and that really is a whole other subject. I stayed at Jewish Family Service from 54 to 62. I married in 1960, and I retired shortly before the birth of our first child. And I went back to Jewish Family Service, Bernie Goldstein. and this only knows why he was willing to hire me two days a week from 10 to 2, but he did. I went back two part days a week in between my second and third child. And when our third child was three years old, or maybe four, Short called me and said, we have opened our own position for a social worker at Golden Acres and I want you to come take the job.
And I said it couldn't be a worse time. I have a child in preschool, we're building a house. I can't do that. And he said, pick your hours. And I laughed and I said, oh, well, she's in nursery school from 9 to 12, two mornings a week How that And he said fine And I thought well maybe I had better do this because when the time came that I would want to go back to work that job might not be available and I very much wanted to work for Hope Shores at Golden Acres And this gentleman let me add hours as I saw fit. And when my youngest was three mornings a week, I worked three mornings a week.
And when she went to kindergarten, I worked till noon. And when she went to first grade, I worked till one. And when she was in third grade and went all day, I worked till three. He let me add it on as my children... As your time became available? As my time became available. And your responsibilities there were... At Golden Acres. Yeah, at Golden Acres. I was in charge of intake and admission to the facility, and I was case manager. manager I did the case work, the counseling with the families and residents. As the home grew, my staff grew so that I was also in charge of supervising the department and staff development.
and a wonderfully rewarding job. Perkshore was an incredible person to work for. And I learned a great deal and enjoyed my major pleasure there was the counseling that I did training young social workers. When you retired there, it was in what year? I retired in seven. It'll be four years. It is four years. Yeah, okay, 1997. And at that time, we had had a change in, Herb Sharp had retired and Marsha Lindner was the new executive vice president. The status of long-term care had become vastly different, and emphasis was on documentation, regulation, governmental. It was entirely different. Well, when you first started going back at that time in Golden Acres, were most people that were being admitted paying their own way into that?
No, not necessarily. The Jewish community then would cover all the homes. Yes. started, we had an admissions committee that met downtown, I think at the first national bank, I'm trying to remember which bank, anyway. I would meet the family and the residents, and I would prepare the social history, and I would gather the financial aid, and I would I would write all of this up anonymously excluding the financial data and it would be presented to the admissions committee and the admissions committee would rule on whether or not they were going to take this person without knowing who the person was and without knowing what that person's financial status was.
The point at which the financial status entered in is that we had two people for one available space. They took the one who could not afford to buy care elsewhere, which was a pretty remarkable concept. Can you recall, maybe without mentioning names or anything, some of the human events that you remember in your years there? The good things, the tragedy? February 23rd and this is tape two a continuation of the interview Bob Zlotke with Marian Pearl We are at the Pearl residence and we will continue our discussion on behalf of the Jewish Historical Society Marian, you had some items that you mentioned to me before we started.
Would you want to include those now? I had forgotten to mention at the time that I was talking about how I happened to go on and get a degree in social work, but my father, who was somewhat ahead of his time, felt that all women should have a profession. And that's how I continued going to school to get my master's degree in social work. But also at the same time, and the same being ahead of his time sort of thing, most people do not realize that married women in the state of Texas, when I married in 1960 to my wonderful husband Ito, I lost some major legal rights.
I lost the right to sign legal documents on my own without my husband's permission. I was no longer able, as a married woman, to exercise. I could not make any kind of a legal contract without his permission. That was a state law in the state of Texas. Well, it was in other states also. It was, Texas was just very late in getting rid of the law. And my father at that time thought this was absolute nonsense. And the only way that you could be legally able to sign contracts, contracts, execute legal documents after you married was to go to court and have your disabilities removed.
The disability was that I was a married female and grouped in with children and people of unsound mind You had to go to court which I did and you had to have a very good reason which my father fabricated for me He was ill at the time and said that I was to tell them that I needed to be able to handle his business affairs. and I went to court to have my disabilities removed and I became what was called a femme soul. This was repealed maybe two years later. The state law. The state law. I mean, it was absolutely archaic and most women, I'm sure my friends didn't know that when they married they lost that ability.
Did this law have any effect on the way you conducted your business at Golden Acres? No. No. No, I just couldn't enter in until I became a femme soul. I was not able to execute any kind of a legal document on my own. Amazing. But you had asked me about whether I could think of any anecdotes. And harking back to the days when Golden Acres was admitting people who were still with a, had a fair degree of physical ability. In other words, nowadays we say that the population has become older and sicker and poorer, and we get very few of the kind of people that we used to admit back in the earlier days.
But one of my cherished memories was a lady who was in the hospital with a broken hip, and her family had told her she needed to go into Golden Acres to recuperate and probably to live in Golden Acres. She was already 90 at that time, or approaching 90. And she informed her family and her doctor that she would rather die than go into Golden Acres and turned her head to the wall quit eating and had been on a hundred strike for several days When the family in panic called and said we can't get her to come, you have to come and see her. I went down to Baylor Hospital.
The doctor, who up until that point had never recognized a social worker's value in any way, shape, or form, greeted me in the family room and said, Marian, she's all yours. And I went into her room and this bright, chipper, cheery little lady was indeed mad as hops. and she said to me, I would rather dive than go into Golden Acres. And I said, well, I can understand the way you feel. She said, I am very angry at my family. I said, tell me about it. And she said, they promised me they would never put me in a nursing home. And I said to her, did you promise them that you would never fall and break your hip?
and she said to me, don't be a damn fool. How could I ever promise them something like that? And I said to her, then how could they ever promise you that they would never need you to go into Golden Acres? And I said to her, let's talk about what your options are and what some of the plans might be. and what you would like to do. And she said, all right. And it turned out that her best option was to go into Golden Acres, and indeed she did. And she had rationalized that with you. We talked about it. Somebody was willing to listen to how angry she was and acknowledge her right to make decisions.
And she did go into Golden Acres and recuperated very nicely from her broken hip. She met or re-met a high school sweetheart who was also in Golden Acres, and they became a twosome. In those days, the population was still able to go on weekend trips and I remember she and her gentleman friend went on a trip to the racetrack in Louisiana and had a wonderful time. And I, oh, maybe three years later, I was walking down the hall and she called me from her room and I went in and she was very frail and not well. and she said to me Marian I need to tell you that the last three years of my life have been perhaps among the happiest I've had and she died very shortly thereafter her family remembers it warmly, I remember it warmly and there were many gratifying gratifying situations and probably still are.
I'm just not there any longer. Is that a situation that you had met time and again about, I don't know whether it's just Jewish families or not, but where the family had promised you'll never go to a Jewish home? More times than not. That seems to be the standard reply of the Jewish daughter to the Jewish mother. It may be non-Jewish, too. I just don't happen to have that experience. We will never put you in a nursing home. Promise me you'll never put me in a nursing home. No, we promise we'll never put you in a nursing home. Well, you know. Did that change through your years at Golden Acres, or was that still a common point of contention?
The way it changed was that the population became older and sicker, and people who went into the nursing home in the last years when I worked there, most of them were coming at a time of crisis, when a lot of times straight from the hospital. It was not the sort of thing that was planned out for years in advance that one day this is where I'll go and that sort of thing. Marion in your earlier years at Golden Acres I don remember did you say that Golden Acres had the capability of hospital care That's not the right term. No, early on in the beginning, they did not admit people who were terminally ill or who were not ambulatory.
But that changed, if for no other reason than the people that came in who were ambulatory and not terminally ill after a period of time became older, frail, or sicker, and terminally ill. Let's see. In your opinion, how did the Jewish homes stack up to the non-Jewish facilities that you might have come into contact with? When the home started and through most of its existence, it was certainly in the early days there was nothing like it in the Southwest. This was a home that people heard of if you went to conferences out of the region. Everybody knew about Golden Acres. Did people from out of the region come to Golden Acres?
They did. There have been different rules on regard to residency. But Herb Shore in his early years was a man of vision and an amazing visionary. We had a home that was unlike any other in this part of the country. Good to hear. in comparison to Jewish homes as well as any of the Jewish homes? Any homes. In its inception and for many years. What do you see in the future, looking ahead now, in caring for the Jewish elderly, and maybe even also the non elderly if there any difference in how they as a social worker worker what would you think is going to change The face of long care has changed radically over the years And it is a very different scenario now.
Nursing homes now are for people who are very infirm, who are very frail and ill. There are other areas open now to the people that once upon a time Golden Acres took in initially because there was no other, nothing else available. And the whole scenario has changed with independent living and assisted living. And Golden Acres has had to come to terms with that and has recently hired a new executive who I think will take us to the next step with a new facility with a very different concept of continuum of care from the independent to the assisted to the nursing home to the critical care.
We're going to see a very different picture in the next few years. Okay. Let's see. What might you say to young people thinking about a career in social work? I don't know. That's a hard one. My career was a little bit atypical. I was fortunate enough to work for a man who let me start working when I had very young children, however many hours a week I cared to give. And I went to work. I laughed. I thought that when I said to him, well, I'll come two mornings a week while my youngest is in nursery school, I thought he would laugh in response and say, get back with me in five years.
He said, fine. And every year that my youngest added time in nursery school I added time at Golden Acres and never worked more than a four week and stayed in the same facility for a number of years so that my salary was because they had increases every year I had a decent enough salary for a part social worker I don't think there are jobs like that anymore. I don't know what I would tell people. By the way, I did work at Jewish Family Service for eight years before I worked at Golden Acres. I don't know what I would tell people. It's so very different. in a long-term care facility now is so much more a matter of paperwork and government regulations and compliance.
The kind of counseling that I did is a thing of the past. So I don't know. All right. What would you think about a possibility if there were a provider of this that would come if you had an elderly parent to put a connection to a house, drop a construction on the property, put a connection to the house. construction was set up where it was all designed for the handicapped, where you, the children, could then care for parents on an attachment to the house. Well, let me switch your question around, Bob. Ito and I are aging. I mean, we're now looking at what, where is our place going to be as we get older, because I have been in this field all my life, and it is certainly, Ito has been involved in my career and knows that We will have to be making some plans for the not too distant future.
And what would we like? And would we like to live with our children? I don't think so. Well, not under the same roof. I was thinking that in and out on the same property. I don't know. Most people do not have that capability. I've not seen that to be a viable option for many people. I guess it could be, but I doubt that it would be in our case. I am interested in what the Jewish community is going to provide here in Dallas, what is going to be the new campus and the new facilities that Golden Acres will be offering somewhere in the next 10 years.
because I imagine that there's a very good chance that we will at some point be in some sort of assisted living facility. The best way to stay out of a nursing home when you get older is to have a very strong support system in town, and that usually means children living here. We don't have children living here. all of our children have moved away So we will have to look toward what is offered what is available here in Dallas or else face the possibility of moving closer to our children which we don rule out if they ever decide where they going to be permanently Right.
Okay, Mary, and I don't have any other questions. Are there any other things that I might not have mentioned that you would like to bring up? No, I don't think so. We've talked mostly about my career in social work over the years. Needless to say, I've also watched Dallas change so enormously. When I grew up, I knew every Jewish person in town. If not personally or by name, I certainly knew them by sight. And of course, now we laugh to think that that could possibly have been. I remember when I grew up over in East Dallas, adjacent to Lakewood, and I remember when I I had friends who moved to Woodland Drive, which was, I don't know, a couple blocks north of the Northwest Highway.
We couldn't imagine, couldn't imagine that these people would move that far away. And, you know, I mean, look what's happened. Look what's happened. Now we're almost up to the Red River of Oklahoma. Yeah, it's a different world. Yeah. Okay, I think we're going to conclude this interview now. Thank you, Marion, very much.