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AI: Well, there was another short story that you were starting to tell yesterday that we didn't go into, and that was also when you were on Vashon Island, and you were mentioning that you started working in the strawberry fields at a very, very young age. And I was wondering if you would just tell a little bit about that, how old you were and what tasks you were started out with.

PB: Oh, I must have been three or four years old, because I was just barely able to carry a two-box tray, and as we grew bigger and stronger, we graduated to a few more boxes, from a two-box to a four-box, to a six, and then finally to a standard eight-box tray. And, of course, we were on a strawberry farm, and we learned to pick berries as soon as we could walk, hardly.

AI: Well, that's really quite a story, because, of course, these days, there aren't as many families that have children working at such a young age. And even in your own case, I wanted to ask, coming forward in time again now, to about 1930 or so, when you returned back to the farm with Jim and Pat, they would have been about that same age then, about three years old or so, and yesterday you were saying that it sounded like they were almost spoiled because they were two of the few young kids around. Did they also have tasks on the farm at a young age?

PB: Oh, they didn't work like we did. That was a different era then, and I think the children had it a lot easier then. Although my daughter did work at the vegetable stand; we had a, when we had our different farms, my daughter stayed in Kent with my mother and father for a while, and she went to Kent school. And Dad had a small vegetable stand right out on the highway, that's the main highway going into Kent. And we had vegetables, all kinds of vegetables, and sometimes people say, "Oh, I want some radishes," or, "I want some carrots." If they want it real fresh, they'd go in the back and dig it up for 'em and bring it to 'em. [Laughs] And Pat always said, "Oh, I had to work to hard when I was little," and I had to say, "Well, it was nothing compared to what we had to do." We had to come right home from school and work, and we had to work at night. We bunched vegetables at night. And we really worked, but, of course, she thought she had to work, but her work was nothing compared to what we did.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.