<Begin Segment 12>

MA: So you were at this time helping your parents at the hotel?

SO: Uh-huh, I was helping them, yeah.

MA: What sorts of things were you doing at the hotel?

SO: Oh, helping make beds, and vacuum clean the rooms. Mainly, my dad was getting pretty old, so I was helping him stoke the furnace. That was a chore. You had to shovel the whole, sometimes close to half a ton of coal into those coal hoppers, remember, to keep the heat going and things like that, (and) chop wood.

MA: And what was the name of this hotel that they owned during this time?

SO: Well, they went from U.S. Hotel, they went to Frederick Hotel, that was the second one.

MA: And was the clientele similar to the U.S.?

SO: It was the same, there were, quite a few of 'em moved with us when we moved from one to the other. The clientele, they just (came) with us. Then from there we got, the last one we had was called the Astor Hotel, that was just about a thirty-room, small hotel, that's the last. And that's where... well, I kind of forced my dad to retire more or less. They wanted him to renew a lease and I told him I wasn't going to renew the lease. So they said, "If you don't renew the lease, you can leave," so I left. I didn't want him to stay, eighty years old and shoveling coal, that wasn't very good. So I forced him out, bought him a little house and they retired.

MA: So with the Frederick Hotel, you said that the, a lot of the clients, clientele moved from the U.S. Hotel.

SO: Uh-huh.

MA: Why did they stay...

SO: Well, I don't know. They just get to know you, more or less. And most of 'em were lumberjacks, they worked down in Idaho, around, I don't know, where they have those (logs), you know, make, cutting. Most of his clientele was old-timers, I mean, they've known him for years. A lot of 'em stayed 'til they passed away.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.