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AI: Okay, well, we're continuing our interview with Peggie Bain, and I wanted to also ask you about your grammar school years, and that, any particular memories from grammar school.

PB: Oh, I loved to go to school. I think if we stayed home, we had to work, so going to school was sort of a vacation for us. Other way around for most children. I enjoyed going to school, but I couldn't participate in a lot of the things that I wanted to, because I had to get home and work. Like baseball or basketball, they usually played after school or during noon, noontime or something like that, and then there was a sewing class. I wanted to take up sewing, and I just got in one class, then so much of it has to be homework. And Dad says, "You can't be wasting your time doing sewing at home," so I got one lesson, and then I had to discontinue that. But I loved to participate in any kind of... like we had a drill team, things like that. I think mainly because I was interested in dancing, and Japanese thought dancing was more for -- [laughs] -- what they call otenba musume. And Mother said, "Well, you, you have a good voice, so why don't you sing instead of taking dancing?" But, of course, she, she never offered to give me any lessons because couldn't afford to give lessons in music and things like that in our time. But we had this maypole dance at school, where you pull the ribbon and weave in and out around a maypole. I remember that as one of my fondest memories, and also we had one show where we did a kind of a drill with the stays from a barrel, took half of a stay, and we went through a drill. And I thought that was so wonderful.

AI: I can't imagine how that would look with a barrel stay. What would you do with the stay?

PB: They cut the stay in half to make a moon, and then I think we had crepe paper wrapped around the stay, and we held it over our head with both hands like this, and then went through different drills, a group of us girls. I guess we must have had the same kind of a uniform on or something, and I just remember that, I thought that was so wonderful. But it all stems to the fact that I loved to dance, or I thought -- I didn't know anything about dancing, because my mother wouldn't let me go dancing or anything. But I thought that was wonderful.

AI: Well, at the time that you were in grammar school, many children did not go beyond grammar school, that was the end of education for many people, girls and boys. And I was wondering, did you have any hopes that you would continue into high school, or had, did you have some thoughts about what you would be doing after grammar school?

PB: No, I, I didn't have any idea, other than I thought, "Well, I'll be working on the farm." Because my parents told me that, "You would go through the eighth grade and that was it." Because I was needed at home, and since my brother was about two-and-a-half years younger, I was sort of the boy of the family for a long time until my brother got old enough. So I did all the heavy work, and I did anything practically what a man does. Because I drove horses, I plowed, I harrowed, I cultivated, people didn't believe that I could cultivate, because you got to pick up the cultivator and turn it around when you get to the end of the row, you know.

AI: Well, tell about that; what does the cultivator look like, and what's entailed in picking it up and all?

PB: Well, it has a little feet on it that you cultivate (with), and it's wide enough to go between the row. And you drive one horse, and he pulls the cultivator and you hang onto the two handles and you go down, straight down the row, and it kind of plows along. Not deep, but shallow enough to pick up the grass and break it off from the roots. And when you get to the end of the row, you got to turn your horse around so you could get in the next row, and you got to pick up the cultivator and turn it around, and you want to be sure that the horse doesn't trample on the, whatever that you're cultivating. Like if you're cultivating strawberries, why, you don't want him to step on the plants, so you have to... the horse is pretty smart. He knows just what to do, he'll turn around and get, get in the right row, and I was, well, I shouldn't be doing this, but I would feed the horse. [Laughs] After he'd come to the end of the row, there'd be some grass, you know, and I'd let the horse maybe take a couple chews of grass, which I'm not supposed to be doing that, because I'm supposed to be working. But I would spoil the horse, and I would even pick some grass with my hand and feed it to the horse. But people just didn't believe that I could harrow, harrow and cultivate and everything. In fact, some of my neighbors, the men used to come down, I remember Mr. Nakatsu says, "I don't believe it," and he came down to see if I could, was really cultivating. And he said, by golly, I was. But I had to be the boy of the family until my brother got big enough and strong enough that he could do it.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.