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REM: So your father is in the greenhouse business, very, at a very early state when you were very young children. The lifetime pursuit, his was greenhouses like yours. What attracted him to the greenhouse business, do you know?

RTM: Well, I'm not too sure whether there was any particular attraction or not. But I think in those days, I mean everybody's looking for work, and wherever there's work, that's where you ended up, and so, doing. Because when we lived in Star Lake, my dad and a few of his cronies got together and they started the Star Lake Lumber Company, and they logged off that whole area up, in that area, in Federal Way there. And so that was a, a disaster as far as venture was concerned, and they lost their shirt on that. And so after that, they continued to do whatever work they could anywhere they could find it.

REM: But the family's been in the greenhouse business eighty years.

RTM: Yeah, approximately. [Laughs]

REM: Approximately. It's a long time, three generations.

RTM: Yes, uh-huh.

REM: What has, have you a feel for why the family have stayed in greenhouse that long? Why -- what, you've devoted your whole life to it.

RTM: Well, actually my dad went from greenhouse to greenhouse just to be working. And so we ended up in Renton, in Maplewood there by the Maplewood Golf Course. And went to work for Hirai's there, and they had a greenhouse there, too. And so... actually, we didn't own our own greenhouses until 1937. We moved to Fife when opportunity presented itself to purchase an existing greenhouse at that time.

REM: Do you remember approximately how much he paid for the greenhouse in Fife?

RTM: I'm not too sure, really.

REM: Okay. About when? '37, you said.

RTM: 1937 we moved to Fife, about.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.