<Begin Segment 13>

AI: Well, so can you tell me what a typical day would be like for you in high school?

GY: Well, high school was typically, typically not exciting for me. I was not an academic. I didn't enjoy going to classes. I didn't enjoy algebra or trigonometry or physics. What did I enjoy? There wasn't very much I enjoyed. [Laughs] Sports, PE. Many of my friends was into sports, as many Niseis are and still are. Football, basketball, baseball. And they played on the school team, lightweight team in basketball, baseball, track because they were much smaller in stature and weight, too. But they were really into, they played for the high school team. That was neat, and played for other teams. But I was never a part of that scene mainly because I was not very athletic, either. Like when we had teams on the playground and we'd have two teams and they would say janken-po, and they would choose teams, like who goes first. Oh, I lost. Well, you go first. Okay. Well I choose, so, I'll choose you. I was the last to be chosen. [Laughs] And they said, "Oh okay, you could have George," kind of thing. And man, I didn't feel very good about that, but what the hell? I wasn't very good anyway. And so that was something that started early in my life, so that continued through high school. So I didn't participate in sports. I didn't collect stamps. I was not into photography. What did I do?

AI: But then you, you had a job, though.

GY: Yeah, I worked on weekends, Saturday and Sundays, and because needed the money, the spending money. And I worked in a fruit and vegetable stand. At that time in those days, we had what we call the supermarket now, where the front, which is open air -- because in Southern California, weather was much more, less... what's the word I want? Open to heavy storms, rain and so forth. Much milder, of course, Southern California. So in the front was fresh, fresh fruits, vegetables. Operated by a Japanese entrepreneur. And this side the Van de Kamp's Bakery, there's meat department, and in the back were the groceries. So it was, that's pretty standard at that time. That was in the '30s and '40s. I worked in one in Los Angeles, and outside of the city, Montrose is, it's a sort of suburb at that time. And every Saturday morning I'd get up about 6 o'clock and take the streetcar down to Japantown, from East LA down to Japantown, and meet at this restaurant, where we gathered to be taken to this far-away store. And it was kind of neat in that I really wanted to eat at this restaurant. It was a greasy-spoon kind of restaurant run by a Japanese. Just a counter. And the men who worked in the market with me were Kibei -- single men. Kibei, these were people who were born here but educated in Japan, came back. They spoke Japanese a lot. And here was this Japanese-run restaurant. And one thing was fried wienies and rice, shoyu on, they really -- and man, that was so, looked so good and tasted so good. And every so often, I'd have breakfast there. Big treat. Rice -- hot rice and fried wienies. And we'd take, we'd be taken to work, and we'd work for at least ten hours, eight hours, maybe ten hours.

And my job was to trim lettuce to be put out on the stand; cabbage, trim the outside leaves; trim the root of the celery, wash the dirt off. As far as fruits and vegetables, polish the apples, great, big Washington Delicious apples from Yakima, right? And line them up and just sort of nice arrangements. And I would do the setting up and cleaning the vegetables early in the morning. But I was a helper. I was not the main person. And I would do some sales. I was not much of a salesman, and one thing that really bothered me was to sell watermelon to customers. In those days, here was this huge watermelon, and all of the customers were, were hakujin, white folks, sort of middle class, upper middle class people. And, "George, now make sure you get me -- I want a ripe melon." So okay. Yes, yes, ma'am. [Laughs] And I'd pretend I know what to do. Tapping, okay, this sounds pretty good. And one thing they did was to -- what was it called? To sample them. We'd have some sort of a sharp, shovel-like (trowel) which is sharp and not, and we'd push that through, then just make a, sort of... and pull a cone -- and to look at it to see what color it was. And many times it's pink, and I was not much -- and some would say, well, it's pink, but it's a good -- it'll taste good and so forth. Take, you know, and I'm sitting there and I'd, I'd poke, and here's another pink one. And the boss was really upset about that. He'd tell me, "Hey don't do that again because we're wasting all these watermelons for two cents a pound or one cent a pound." (Sampling for the color and flavor of watermelons was called "plugging." Most customers preferred bright red melon flesh; light pink often meant a lack of sweetness which was not always true. My boss objected to my not being an assertive salesman.) And the apples were three pounds for 25 cents. Three pounds for 25 cents. I still remember that because now it's -- what was it? Fifty-nine cents a pound or something like that? Yakima apples, boy, yeah, I remember that.

And then I just really hated that Saturday, Sunday, so I didn't have a chance to hang out with the guys. But 50 cents an hour, about four dollars a day, two days, eight dollars. And I was very frugal about the money I earned. Didn't give any of it to my mother or father. I just put it in the bank, and I'd spend it on getting a pie or something when it would go to -- and I was not very, a nice person. And I'd treat myself to buy like a lemon cream pie, and I'd bring it home and just eat it by myself and hide it in my drawer. Wouldn't share it with my sisters. That was kind of nasty, but anyway, that's me. That's what I did with money, buy candy or something like that.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.