<Begin Segment 33>

AI: Well, now tell me about your honeymoon and the trip that you took after that. I'm very interested to hear about your travels.

BS: Okay, we didn't have any money. We kid our kids, they say, "Well, why did you marry Dad?" Or, "Dad, why did you marry Mom?" We say, "Oh, we married each other for money but we found out too late that neither one of us had any." [Laughs] Because it was like, because we're struggling from camp so anything that, our paychecks, we were giving to our parents and he was doing the same thing. And then anything we needed we'd ask my dad and he'd give us the money. But I was the kind of person that I wouldn't ask. I figured he must know what my needs are, so I wouldn't ask. And my sister above me, she's the one that would ask and she'd get everything. [Laughs] But then Art, too, he was giving his paycheck, 'cause he was the eldest. And he, being the man, he gave his check to his dad, too, so we didn't really have any money so to speak and actually we went on our honeymoon. We went, we drove down to Florida and we were planning to stay in Miami Beach. But when we went to see how much it cost to stay in Miami Beach we said, "We're not staying here," so we just went on to Fort Lauderdale and stayed there in Palm Beach and then we came back up. But we came back because we ran out of money. [Laughs]

AI: Well, you had never been to the south part of the country, had you?

BS: No. Oh yes, so when, when we, during that time they were still white, blacks and white drinking fountains and bathrooms, restrooms. So when we would come to a rest area I wouldn't know where to go because it says "white" and it says "black" and I'm not white, I'm not black, where am I gonna go? So I figured, well, the safest thing is to go, to do is to go in the black. And the black woman says, "No, you don't come here, you go over there." And so that's why I went to the white --

AI: Tell me about that. Why did you think it was the safest thing was to go the black side?

BS: Because I'm not white. And I guess because of what happened, our camp experience, I felt I wasn't equal as a white so I must belong with the opposite. So that's where I went.

AI: But when you did go there, then the black --

BS: The lady told me, she said, "No, you don't belong here. You go over there." But you still felt like, oh, uncomfortable because that, "Do I really belong here?"

AI: That must've been kind of a shock.

BS: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

AI: And this was in 1955?

BS: Uh-huh.

AI: That you were in the South and you saw this.

BS: Yes, yes. But in Chicago, see, they didn't have that segregation.

AI: Looking back on that, it's hard to believe that it wasn't that long ago.

BS: Uh-huh. That's right, that's right.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.