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TI: Going back, you were just going to talk about sports now, so talk about sports in camp.

SY: Well, sports was... well, before sports, they had a laundry room. And on the opposite side was, like, a little recreation room, and so before sports even came about, we all met, especially on a snowy day or whatever, and we would play games like checkers, yo-yos, tops. And the older guys taught us games like Blind Man's Bluff, Sink the Battle Ship, when the weather was nice, Annie Annie Over, Prisoner's... I forgot the exact title, but it was, you split the team in two and you try to run through without getting tagged. So we would play, the older guys would teach us all these different variety of game. And then, as the sports, somebody had a ball, a football, it depends on the season, they taught us how to kick and throw, play game and so forth. And softball was a big thing during the summer, and we would have pick-up games when the older guys were working, and we would play the whole afternoon, just playing pick-up game. If we didn't have enough players, we would have a game where somebody would pitch to you and if you hit it and somebody catch it, he's out. And so we would rotate to see who was going to be batters up. We had an outside basketball court on Block 7, so my father worked with the government and some way or another met with some of the Caucasian people and they gave him old basketballs from high schools, and he was able to repair that, so I was one of the popular guys with a basketball. But then not everybody played basketball, but since it was so close, we had a lot of pick-up games and so forth. Horse was a big game, and so forth.

And then, because of the winter, somebody came up with the idea of putting dirt all the way around, filling it up with water, and next morning you have ice skating rink. And little by little people start buying ice skates. Our parents were too poor, so what we would do is we have a fifteen-minute rotation, of borrowing somebody's ice skates. And some people had figure skate and hockey skate. Well, we thought that hockey was, hockey skate was for speed, it was more masculine, and the figure skate was for the girls because they could do the twirls and all that, but they could stop better, so there would be a long argument which was the better, and I think it didn't really matter, it depends on who owned what. And if the skates was too big we would stuff it with cotton so that we would fit into the skates. And then the football field was converted into ice skating, seemed like there were hundreds of people ice skating, and so teenagers, adults, young kids, all seemed to be enjoying ice skating because they all could do it. And so that was a type of winter sport. But then the people were involved in churches, some people were involved in the Boy Scouts, with I joined, Troop 333, and we went camping at Shoshone River and so forth.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.