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AI: Well, and then a few years later, when you were about nine years old, was it, that your family moved and left Vashon?

PB: Well, actually, when I was checking out some of the records, I was only... let's see. I was younger than nine; I was probably seven-and-a-half or eight.

AI: Okay, so, so then tell me about where you moved to after Vashon.

PB: Well, when we started to move, why, I drove the wagon across on the ferry, and my brother and sister went with me, the three of us, we went to Des Moines across on the ferry. And of course, everybody kind of looked after us because we were just kids, they would help us whenever they could. But I thought that was quite a task, because we had to go down this steep hill, and I was always afraid that the wagon was gonna go down the hill, and we had the brake on, but I always thought the horse might slip or something and we'd go sailing down the hill. But we never did; we had a very good horse, a white horse we called Chub, and that horse was real smart.

AI: It sounds like that would have been scary for you kids.

PB: Yes, it was. It was.

AI: When you, when you got to Des Moines, tell me about the place that you moved to, where you lived.

PB: My father had leased a place, the old Rudberg place, and the original house that was there evidently burned to the ground about a year before we moved in. And there was a big barn there, and kind of an apartment on the far end of this barn, and that was where we lived. And it was, it was really a huge barn, because the lower part was large enough that one could skate in there. I don't know why we never learned to skate, but we used to ride our bicycle in there, so you can imagine it's a big barn. And it had a picket gate at one end of it, was open on the top and bottom, and the cats would come in. And we were just scared to death of the cats. And I just can't for the life of me imagine why we never blocked it off so they wouldn't come in. But they had the run of the place; they'd go up in the hayloft, which was way up high. It felt like kind of a four-story place because of the way the stairs were built. But we lived there for the five years that Dad had leased the place.

AI: So from about 1917 or so, and because it was an actual barn, you had your living area, kind of living apartment in one part of it as you mentioned, and then what else was in the barn?

PB: Well, there was a stall there for horses, and then there was a deep hole there where we kept our rabbits and guinea pigs. I don't recall having any chickens; we always had chickens, but we didn't, I don't remember having any at the Des Moines place. But we did have a horse and a cow. We had a cow named Fannie, and that's my sister's name and she didn't like it -- [laughs] -- because she didn't want the same name as a cow.

AI: Oh, I don't blame her. Well, you have a picture of the house and the -- the house that burned down and the barn, if you could just hold that for a moment.

PB: [Holds up photograph].

AI: And so in this picture, the house is in the forefront, and the barn, which...

PB: The barn is in the back.

AI: In the back.

PB: That's where we lived. We lived in the end of the barn, and that little peak on the barn is still there. So I'm gonna get a picture of that one of these days.

AI: That's great.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.