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AI: As you went around the country on this trip, were there other instances of really blatant racism or prejudice that you --

RS: Well, I think after that we couldn't get out of the South quickly enough. And, but having committed ourselves to driving around the, you know, if you've ever driven around the coastline of Florida, it takes forever. That's, I think it's longer than driving from LA to Seattle. And it took us a week to get around Florida. And then when we got Miami, we wanted to go to Miami Beach, which we did. And we ended up on a gay beach by accident. And Joe, who had just come out of the closet, couldn't believe that there was such a thing as a gay beach. And he was sitting there in this blazing summer sun and he got seriously sunburned. And we went to the Everglades and he was sick the whole time. And we got to New Orleans and at that point we were racing to try to maybe get him to a hospital or getting into this trip. He was throwing up and everything else. And by the time we got to Texas we had to put him in the hospital. And his body was blistered and, oh, it was just awful. So he was in the hospital for two days. And then finally we continued with the trip and by the time we got to Tucson he had to go back in the hospital again. And then, by the time we got to California, he was okay and then we continued on with the trip.

And we came up, we got up to Seattle and I remember the second day we were here there was a party out at, across the Narrows Bridge, I can't remember the name of that area, but one of the ceramic graduate students had a farm out there or something. He had this big cook-out, picnic. And we all went out there. And Okada was there, and Bob Mackie and a lot of my friends and so we all had this big get-together. And it was right on this beach and it was low tide and there were oysters all over the place. And so Frank said, "Let's make a chowder." So we got this, found this big bucket and washed it out and filled it full of water. And we, somebody had a farm nearby and we went there and picked all these tomatoes and stuff and cut 'em up and dumped 'em in. And went out and got all these clams and oysters and just filled this bucket and cooked it, made this fire and cooked it up, and it smelled funny. And what we found out, when we tasted it, we thought it was all done, all the clams opened up and everything, that it was a tar bucket. And what we thought was this black vessel, it was actually tar. And we had, oh my God, we had to throw that out and wasted all this food and everything, but that was sort of the highlight of that party, was Okada's folly. We kidded him about that for years and years.

So anyway, yeah, we spent a couple of weeks in Seattle and then drove down to Kansas since Joe was going to K State, and dropped him off in Manhattan. We went to Lawrence. Found out Voss wasn't going to be there. And then immediately Joe and I flew to Rhode Island, 'cause that's where all of our stuff was stored. And we rented this big truck, loaded his stuff up in Rhode Island, and went to Syracuse, loaded our stuff up, and then we drove non-stop from there back to Kansas. And so, needless to say, there were a lot of miles we put on, we drove that summer.

AI: Wow, what a trip.

<End Segment 43> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.