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AI: Well, you were just telling us about some of your, the things that you did in the 1930s, and let's see... I think you had also mentioned that right after you had worked for the Edris family, in about 1935, that you then went down to California for a while.

PB: Yes, I was... I wanted to go to California. I always had seen pictures of the palm trees and the stucco houses, and I thought they were so beautiful, and I always thought, well, if I ever got a chance, I wanted to go to California. Well, Dad decided that we could go down to California to see how, what kind of farming they did and how they farmed down there. So my brother and sister and dad -- four of us -- drove down to California, and we stayed with this Tanouye family. There was about three families there that lived under a grove of eucalyptus trees, and oh, the farms down there were so different; the houses were so different. They lived in houses that to us, seemed like, more like shacks. In fact, one family, the floorboards were, you could see the ground standing in the house, and you just, when you swept the floor, why, you just sweep and the, everything would go down the cracks.

AI: Where was it that the Tanouye family lived?

PB: We, we lived in Torrance, but we worked around Torrance and Long Beach, I guess that was called. And Gardena, and there were oil wells all over, and they made that kachunk-kachunk noise, and the smell of the oil, it just made me kinda ill, because I didn't like the smell of gas or oil. They had farms right underneath the oil wells, carrot fields, and they raised a lot of young berries, boysenberries, different kind of berries... black caps, and different than what we have up here. And there were gopher snakes; great big snakes that lived in these holes in the fields. It would scare the women, oh, they were terrified of the snakes. They didn't bother me much because Dad had made me play with snakes at home. He didn't want me to be afraid of something that wasn't gonna hurt me, so he used to take a snake, put it in his pocket and bring it home, and then he'd let me play with it. Mother was horrified; she hated snakes. But the first time I picked up a gopher snake, he was about five feet long, and he kind of reared back, and it frightened me. We have a picture of that -- [laughs] -- so I had the awfulest expression on my face, so I cut that part out, but I still have the picture of me holding this snake. They were harmless; they went after the gophers, so if we ever saw one in the field, just take 'em to a gopher (hole) or chase him, and he'd go right down the gopher hole.

AI: Oh, my. [Laughs] What an experience. Well, while you were down in California, what were some of the things that stand out in your mind about that, that time in California?

PB: Well, they did a different way of farming. They had, like strawberries, they had flumes in between the rows, and they'd run the water down, so it would be quite wet when we'd go out and pick berries. And a lot of people, they don't stoop; they kneel or squat down, and they'd get wet, because it would be quite damp. But we were used to stooping, so we didn't get wet. But once you were out in the field, you had to stay out there. There was no bathroom facilities or anything, and people just kept going, going, and they just worked so hard. And we worked in the celery field, my brother cut asparagus, and they had huge farms that they hired a lot of people. There were quite a few people, we worked in the celery patch, and the one thing that was very unusual was the little toads. The certain time, they'd come out, and there'd be thousands of 'em. And they would jump up and down, and you could, it was just like raindrops falling. If you drove a car, you'd run over a lot of 'em, because they're so thick on the roads. They're kinda cute, they're little tiny toads, if you're not afraid of frogs.

AI: So that didn't bother you?

PB: No, the little ones are cute. And we'd take a Japanese bath every night, and these little toads would sit on the edge of the tub. And they'd just sit there blinking their eyes because the steam, you know, from the tub. But the thing was, when, like Japanese bathing, you get outside and wash, and there was rats in there, and they'd come and get the soap. You couldn't put the soap down because they'd grab it as fast as you put it down, and they'd take off with the soap. So we had to watch that, hang onto the soap -- [laughs] -- or else the rats would get it. But we had kind of fun, because everything was new to us. And we enjoyed working with the people... but the homes, like where we stayed, we, it was sort of a boy house, but the place where we slept, there was absolutely nothing. No floor, we just had boards about a foot off the ground, and a mattress on top of that. One little window at the far end, that's all, that was our bedroom.

And, of course, we heard about the black widow spiders, and oh, we were so afraid that they were gonna come out at night and bite us or something, but then we later learned that they're not running around loose; the black widows usually were inside of boxes. They stayed in the corner of the boxes, so if there was a stack of boxes, then likely to find black widows in there. But they, they would get in the creases of things. And they had a different way of planting tomatoes. They'd plant a tomato plant, and then they'd put a, like a tent over the tomatoes, and all the tents facing a certain direction, away from the wind, to protect the plants. And then when the plants outgrow these tents and start coming out, then we pick up the tents and get rid of them. So when that time came, why, we would pick up the tents and tuck 'em under our arm and go around just picking 'em up. Until we found out that the black widows were inside of the tents. That really frightened us, because here we were, tucking 'em under our arm, and the pressure, they could have bitten us. So we learned a lot.

AI: Did you ever have a problem with the, getting bitten?

PB: No, we didn't, never got bit by a black widow, but there were hills of red ants that oh, their bite was terrible. It would hurt for weeks, and it would swell up and that was when we were planting the tomato plants. And we didn't know about it, there'd be hills of these little red ants. I got bit couple times from these red ants. And they don't let go; they just grab a hold of you, and they just hang on. You could pull 'em or try to pull 'em off, and they won't let go. You almost have to behead them, but they were terrible, and it would hurt for weeks afterward. And then, that's the first time I saw a horned toad. They're cute when you get to know them, but it scared me because they're ugly. But the children played with them; you pet 'em on their head, and their eyes would bleed, they shed red tears. And the children played with them. After a while, we got to thinking they're kind of cute, though, and the first time I dug one up and saw it, it just really scared me, because they look like a little dragon. They're small, but they're ugly little things.

AI: So you had a lot of different, new experiences in California, then.

PB: Oh, yes. Things that we'd never seen up here.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.