<Begin Segment 2>

[Ed. note: This transcript has been edited by the narrator]

TI: There was something you said about Mr. Tanabe, I guess your stepfather, working with the White River Dairy. Do you know much about that? I'm curious...

FT: No, I don't know too much about that dairy. I think (it closed) sometime, in the (...) mid-'20s, I guess. And then he went to work for, he had a little stand in the public, I mean, the farmer's market area. Yeah, he worked there for a while and then he got a job as a cook on the Great Northern Railway system. Now, that's another story because he worked on the trains for a while, and then (...) he opened up a little restaurant in Essex, Montana or Walton, Montana (...). I think (...) was a railway depot address and the other, (...) a township. (...) But anyway, he opened this little restaurant and what it did was (feed) a special crew that took (...) another locomotive to (...) power the (eastbound) train over the summit. And then the crew would come back (on) the westbound train, and they would billet there (...). Well, and one summer, I was there when somebody set the place on fire and it burned down. And so, he moved...

TI: Well, before you move on, so someone set the place on fire intentionally?

FT: Huh?

TI: Was that intentionally?

FT: Yeah, it looked like it was (arson). Somebody set the (wastepaper towel container) in the bathroom (...) on fire.

TI: Was there, do you have any sense of why someone would do that?

FT: I have no idea.

TI: And so when you're, when, so what would you call Mr. Tanabe? Would you call him your father or your stepfather? How would you describe him?

FT: He was a very hard-working man. And he was really nice to us, of course.

TI: So when he had his restaurant in Montana, then your mother would still be in Seattle?

FT: We were in Seattle, right. And then during the summer I would go out and be with him. And after the place burned down, he leased a restaurant in Cut Bank, Montana, which is east of the Rockies. Well, you know, it's... the place that burned down was on the southern borders of Glacier Park, and on the west side of the summit. Well, Cut Bank is on the other side. It's in the prairie country. And so, I guess that was about '36, I guess (when) he moved there. He opened up a restaurant there. (...) After I graduated from high school in '37, the family all moved to Cut Bank. And I came back (alone), during the summer, to work in (a salmon cannery in Alaska).

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.