<Begin Segment 17>

TI: What about, another story that you mentioned about your mother and father was that your father occasionally liked to drink alcohol?

BH: Uh-huh.

TI: And this is during Prohibition...

BH: Just wine, just regular rice wine, I guess.

TI: And so during Prohibition, how did your father...

BH: We had one, but I don't know how they got it -- I don't think anybody came to check or anything like that. But my mother used to make it, and I said, "Why do you make it?" 'Cause my father would kind of get wild and rant and rave and all that. So I said, "Why do you make it?" And she says, "If I don't make it here, he'll go someplace else and do the same thing." So she says, "Might as well have it here," so she used to make it. [Laughs]

TI: And so she would make, you said it, was it rice wine?

BH: Rice wine.

TI: Okay, so sake.

BH: Yeah. And the sheriff and everybody in Bellevue used to like it, too, so they come over once in a while. [Laughs]

TI: So they'd come by and try -- [coughs] excuse me -- sake. Another story you mentioned over the break was we're talking about food and bread. And so in Bellevue, you lived right now close to Bell Square. Where was the bakery? Where did you go...

BH: It's still there, that kind of a high rise there. You had to go up some steps, it was level with the street, but you had to climb a little bit, I remember. So I think even now, I think you can see it's raised a little bit higher than other places.

TI: So you mean the bakery, where the bakery was?

BH: Uh-huh, yeah.

TI: And so where was this located?

BH: Well, it's right in the middle of there, someplace.

TI: No, but in terms of what street, the bakery?

BH: Oh, it would be directly across from... I don't know what's across the street now. But I think the furniture, fine furniture and things.

TI: So this is down in the old time, like Main Street.

BH: Yeah, Main Street, uh-huh.

TI: So it's a healthy walk. So when you'd go down to the bakery and get this, you'd have to walk back five or six blocks to get back home.

BH: We were kids, so you know, we didn't mind it.

TI: So describe to me what happened to the bread between the bakery and your house.

BH: [Laughs] So my mother, you know, we were very poor, and I think she must have -- I don't know how much the bread was, maybe five cents or something. So we'd go down and we bought the bread, but it was just in the process of baking or something, you could smell that, my brother and I. And it was warm. So he and I started taking a piece of that crust off of the end of the bread. And then we kept digging until it was almost hollow, just the outside. [Laughs] When we got home, boy, we got it. My mother got so angry with us. [Laughs] She was chasing us around with a broom handle. [Laughs]

TI: Because what you brought back was just a hollow...

BH: Hollow. So we had to go back down and get another loaf that was for our sandwiches for school. That's about the only time that I remember them getting angry at us. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, that's a good story.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.