<Begin Segment 8>

TI: I want to get a sense, for you, of what you could remember of Clovis in terms of just growing up. What the community was like, and some of the...

RE: Oh, Clovis was, it was fun, you know, as kids, we went to baseball games in the summer. Clovis had a single A baseball team. I knew the football -- I mean, the baseball players, all by names, and we used to catch fly balls that went over the fence, and we would, they wanted it back, but we'd run away from them. [Laughs] But we played around the railroad station, we sold, we used to take our wagon and we knew when the Pullman arrived, as I mentioned probably in that little thing. So we would sell everything from tarantulas in a mayonnaise jar to a rattle from a rattlesnake that we cut off and save, or a cactus in a Campbell's soup container. We did all kinds of things.

TI: And when you said "we," who would be with you?

RE: The Kimura family, Frank and Freddie Kimura were my buddies, and we were about the same age, and so we chummed around. My younger brother was too young to be doing things to be doing things with us, but we, we chummed around. We did things, we helped carry suitcases from the train station to the Hotel Clovis, and you know, we always did things to make a little money here and there.

TI: And so you would just get, like, tips from people to help. And then what would you do with the money?

RE: Buy candy, candy was, you know, one penny candies and whatever.

TI: Now, so it was like you guys were almost scheming. So you're trying to figure out what can you sell to these people?

RE: Correct.

TI: What could you find that you could sell? So it wasn't like you were buying things, it was like...

RE: And most people who got off the Pullman said, "Oh, look at the little Indian boys," and never dreamed that we were Asian background. 'Cause our hair was, we were so dark-skinned from the blazing son, and our hair was unkempt in most cases, unless my dad took the, cut around there, and then we looked like Japanese kids. But otherwise, we looked like typically Indian kids. So they would give us a few, two cents or something, you'd get a picture taken with the... that's when we'd line up with those white folks.

TI: Oh, that's interesting, yeah.

RE: Always had a handout before, no picture. No money, no picture.

TI: [Laughs] That's good.

RE: We were smart.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.