This oral history interview with Joseph H. Rudd was conducted by Curtis Johnson on November 20, 1980, in Vancouver, Washington. The interview was conducted as part of the Drive-in Restaurants of Portland Oral History Project, a series of interviews that Johnson conducted about the history of Portland drive-ins, with a particular emphasis on Tik-Tok and Yaw's Top Notch.

In this interview, Rudd discusses his early life, including his experience designing camps while in the National Guard during World War II. He talks about his early career as an architect with the Wolf & Zimmer architecture firm. He speaks at length about his design work for the building for Yaw’s Top Notch drive-in restaurant at Northeast 42nd Avenue and Sandy Boulevard in Portland, including the kitchen design and equipment, working with W.P. Yaw, and returning to work on a remodel of the building a decade later. He discusses operating his own architecture firm, Rudd & Associates, and talks about other buildings he designed and about working with clients. He then revisits the topics of his early architecture career and his work for Yaw’s Top Notch. He closes the interview by discussing the challenges and rewards of a career in architecture.