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TI: I'm trying to think, so First and Washington, you're, like, in the heart of the Pioneer Square area. What did you do for play? Was there places to play down there with other kids?

KT: Yeah. There was a lot of landlords with family that had hotels there. There were quite a few, and then I remember we just played out in the streets. And then when the Hooverville, the homeless camp that was on the hill, we used to walk down there and walk down around the Hooverville itself. And we'd pick up ideas on how they were building their huts and whatnot. So we would go, I think it was Main Street, there was a place where it had a lot of furniture shipped to them, and they would have all their crates and whatnot out in the side. And I remember my friends and I, we actually built ourselves a clubhouse out of the straw mats that they had everything in. And we actually built a pretty good clubhouse in this vacant lot, had our own clubhouse that we would go to and stick around. We didn't smoke or anything like that. [Laughs]

TI: But you got your ideas in terms of how to construct it from the construction...

KT: Walking through Hooverville, right, seeing all how their homes were constructed and whatnot. And a bunch of us would get together and say, "Hey, they did it this way," we had our own ideas. We had a nice clubhouse.

TI: Interesting. So how far away was Hooverville from First and Washington? How far did you have to go?

KT: First and Washington... it was not more than a mile away.

TI: And so describe for me what Hooverville was like when you, what did you recollect about Hooverville?

KT: Well, I remember the people that were living there were real nice to us. They would see us and we'll talk to them. Some of them would even give us candy or whatnot. To me, it was good. I mean, we reacted pretty good with them.

TI: And describe, who were the residents of Hooverville? Who do you recall?

KT: All Caucasians. I guess there wasn't, I don't recall too many blacks, but mostly white Caucasians. They were all Scandinavians, predominately, I think.

TI: Now, did your mother or father ever warn you or caution you about going down there or other places?

KT: I don't remember being told not to go there. But, you know, they were running the hotel, so we were occupied. So I really, I don't know. [Laughs]

TI: And any memories about Hooverville that, like a person or something that just, you could remember from Hooverville?

KT: Well, I guess the main thing is that taught me not to be scared, you know, of them. Because I know when I was going to college at University of Washington, and my freshman and sophomore years, I would have my classmates say, "You went down on First Avenue?" They said, "We're scared to go down there." So I said, "Okay, let's make a night out. You come on down, and I'll take you around," and we'd go from shop to shop and all the shop owners would say hello to me. And I was well-known, I mean, they knew who we were. And I would walk 'em around and they said, "Oh, this isn't so bad." But they were really thinking that, hey, if they got, they went down there, they would be clubbed to death, you know.

TI: So that was your neighborhood, you knew the people...

KT: Yeah, right.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.