Early life in San Francisco and first contacts with astronomy in 1920; Public Lectures under auspices of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific; college years at University of California at Berkeley, 1926-1930; interests in physics and astronomy; contact with Donald Menzel; move to Caltech and graduate studies; work with Paul Merrill; Mount Wilson in the 1930s; limitations of spectroscopic equipment; recollections of Edwin Hubble; job offers and decision to remain at Mt. Wilson; origins of research interests and early work leading to Wilson-Bappu Effect; stellar chromospheres and first use of 100-inch telescope in 1938; work on rocket project during World War II; recollections of Walter Baade and Walter S. Adams; postwar years at Mount Wilson; Ira Bowen; Office of Naval Research (ONR) funding; research on planetary nebulae; instrumentation for the 200-inch telescope; internal peer review system; Halton C. Arp's work; continued work on Wilson-Bappu Effect and need for theoretical understanding; study of the solar cycle; teaching and graduate students; work with Rudolph Minkowski; recalibration of Cepheid period/luminosity; Paul W. Hodge's and George Wallerstein's paper of 1967; Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky; the operation of Hale Observatories; kinematics of the Orion Nebula; origin of southern station at Las Campanas; Hale Observatories and Caltech; Bowen's retirement. Also prominently mentioned are: Helmut Abt, Lawrence H. Aller, Horace W. Babcock, Raymond Thayer Birge, William W. Campbell, Theodore Dunham, Jr., Hyades, Donald Howard Menzel, Dimitri Mihalis, Joseph H. Moore, Guido M nch, F. Pease, George Preston, Rayet, Allan Sandage, Garritt P. Serviss, Charles Donald Shane, Stanislaus Vasilevskis, Wolf; Carnegie Institution of Washington, Hale Observatories, Kitt Peak National Observatory, Lick Observatory, University of California at Berkeley, and Yerkes Observatory.