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TI: So we're talking about your father, so he's working in the grocery store with Mr. Leonard. And eventually, did he, like, get a small farm or talk about your...

MY: Well, I don't remember what year it was, but Mr. Leonard went on vacation to California, and he was killed in an automobile accident. And so it was a matter of whether somebody could take over the store or close it up. So I guess Dad decided he's going to take a chance and run the store for a while. He ran that store for a while, and until about 1928, I think. Then he opened his own store. He used the garage for that store 'til he could make up enough money to build a store in front of the house.

TI: Now, why would, like in 1928, so he's running Mr. Leonard's grocery store, why would he switch from that store to his own store?

MY: Well, the majority of the employees were Caucasian. So I guess there was a Mr. Johnson there that he introduced us to him, and his wife's name was Maude, and she was the bookkeeper. And so he would always say, "This is Mr. Johnson, and his wife Maude." Isn't there some kind of a story about a Maude? I can't think of what it was now. But I think there's some kind of a story. Well, in fact, there's a picture of Dad and Mom and Dad's cousin in a wagon, taken at the Puyallup Fair in 1907, you know. And the poor horse is a, dragged out, poor horse, pulling that wagon, and it says alongside, it says, "And her name was Maude." So that's where "Maude" came in. But I don't know, makes you wonder where all these things came from.

TI: Yeah, interesting. But when your father transitioned in 1928 from, originally, the Leonard store to his own, did the Leonard store keep running with other people?

MY: Yeah, it kept running, but I don't remember how long it went. Because gradually, Mr. Johnson moved to Kent, and he opened a hardware store. And so I don't, I don't remember when they closed up the grocery store. It's funny how you remember certain things, it's clear, and it seemed like it just dropped out of the picture, you know.

TI: Yeah. Well, in terms of customers, when your father opened his store, were they pretty much the same customers as before?

MY: Yeah, yeah.

TI: So many of them just moved over to your father's store.

MY: Uh-huh. Then Dad started delivering groceries, so then it was mostly Japanese. See, like in those good old days, Japanese farmers were clustered in one big ranch, you know, like Fisher's, I think they had 90 or 100 acres. And so he split it up among four or five families. So the residential area would be about maybe five farmhouses in like a block, you know. And so that's the way the majority of 'em went. Of course, Japanese couldn't buy the, buy the land anyway at the time. So that's the way they accommodated 'em, I guess.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.