<Begin Segment 10>

TI: So you said you were at Maryknoll for, what, a couple years?

BH: Fifteen, sixteen, I was there 'til, must be about a year and a half or two, I guess, but I lived there even after I went to school, I lived there. Because I went to Immaculate High School, which is only about two blocks away.

TI: And then after...

BH: Then after sixteen or so, they insisted, the nuns said we should go out and get some experience. So people would call in and ask if they want to, somebody to come and live with them to be a babysitter or something like that.

TI: So like a live-in housekeeper or nanny kind of thing.

BH: Yeah, uh-huh.

TI: Okay. And how was that? How did you like doing that?

BH: That was all right. They treated me nicely.

TI: And so generally who would you work for? What kind of families would you...

BH: Oh, they were, well, the first one I went to was, the father was a banker. And they had three boys.

TI: And do you remember, like, what neighborhood this would be in?

BH: I think it's Capitol Hill, lower Capitol Hill, I guess. It's a block up from the freeway, I remember.

TI: And what kind of things would you do at the house?

BH: I think I would help cooking, and washing dishes and taking care of the younger ones. They were close to my age. I think the oldest one was about my age, three boys.

TI: And do you remember for this first family, how long you did this?

BH: I went to school from there. They usually give me bus fare to go to school every day. So I must have gone there about a year.

TI: And so this was still Immaculate?

BH: I was still going to school. Then I heard of another family that wanted, looking for somebody, so I decided I'm going to go to that. That was the last family I stayed with. It was the Rogers family.

TI: And what was it about this other family that made you decide you'd rather work with them than this first...

BH: Well, I don't know. Living there with three boys, so others were girls, they had a daughter and two, twins, three girls. Three girls and a boy. And he was just a little kid then.

TI: So going back to that first family with three boys, was it pretty hard?

BH: No, it was nice. They were all good to me. Either place, they were all, treated real nice.

TI: Okay, but you just thought going to a family with three girls would be better. So you did this, you were now about seventeen years old?

BH: No, must be seventeen.

TI: Okay, so about seventeen.

BH: Seventeen, eighteen.

TI: And then what happened? About now is when you graduated from high school also?

BH: I graduated in the meantime.

TI: And so what happened next?

BH: After that, then I went to this other family I stayed with 'til the very end. In fact, they treated me like a family. They were people from Boston.

TI: And do you recall what that father did in that family?

BH: He was an eastern representative of some tool company. And he was real nice, and so they had one older girl, and she married a doctor at the end, and then they had twins, twin girls and a boy. The little boy is the one I took care of, mostly.

TI: Okay, so you did this, and then what happened after that?

BH: Oh, after that I got married. [Laughs]

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.