<Begin Segment 10>

AM: When I think of Puyallup, I think of only one thing, and that is we lived under a grandstand. Because my mother and I were not very knowledgeable about processes... I now know what to do, but in those days, I didn't know. We just waited until somebody told us we needed to do something. And so when we signed up for our quarters, we ended up with horse stalls, I mean, literally horse stalls. So we had one horse stall in which they had four camp cots and one naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. Open to the grand -- because it's under the grandstand, so you know the top, there's no such thing as a ceiling, you had the grandstand ceiling. And dirt, the floor was, well, horses stood on dirt and that's what we slept on. And it took me quite a while to understand what, what I had, was contending with, because I was on my bunk, because there's, you don't see the daylight 'cause you're under the grandstand. You had this one naked light bulb, and I was lying on my bunk and I was looking at the wall, and I was flicking away at the wall when I realized it was whitewashed, and underneath it was dog, I mean, horse dung. And I realized what I had scratched up was horse dung. And that was probably the most difficult time, I think, and that is because you're in an open grandstand, you hear noises, everything, people crying, people, babies crying, women groaning, men groaning. Not in pleasure, obviously, they were elderly who were very, well, it was very uncomfortable. You had no mattresses, we just had camp cots. And later on, I think we were able to get mattress ticking, we went down and got straw and filled it so we could at least get things other than camp cot. But there was a negative side to straw, and that is that you can't sleep quietly on it. Every time you move you can hear the straw crackle, and you could imagine what it's like hear everybody else, noise from other human beings.

DM: Was there, were there organized activities for kids at Puyallup?

AM: Not that I know, ever aware of. All I know is that I had mostly the responsibility of helping my mother maneuver whatever processes there were. So I don't, there was nothing that I ever participated.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright ©2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.