Densho Digital Archive - Marjorie Matsushita Sperling Interview (denshovh-smarjorie-01-0009)

<Begin Segment 9>

TI: So tell me, going back to school, if your friends were to describe you in terms of you as a student, what would they say?

MS: I was a terrible student. They were getting As and Bs, and I didn't do too well. But I didn't really care, either. [Laughs] And because I joined the glee club and those kinds of things, and I was free to do more of these things, I think. And I don't know. I really feel that I was given a lot more freedom than, perhaps, some of the others.

TI: And how were your parents with you not getting good grades?

MS: I don't think they knew the, really, the reason that I should have been getting good grades, but they did tell me to study and so forth. But because they couldn't read the language, they really couldn't help. And I didn't care.

TI: Well, and this might be a little further along, there might be some other things to talk about. But I know after you graduated from high school, you went to the University of Washington in Seattle.

MS: Yes.

TI: But before we go there, is there any other memories about high school or any stories that you want to share?

MS: No, it was just kind of a routine that we went through, and we had our limits. You can't do things when you're very busy and so forth. And you lived in a family unit that you knew your place, too. And so that you had patterns of things that you did, and that was all right with me. And when I was a kid, I used to run around playing, and playing out in the country and running around. And I look at, go back, and there was a, I remember there was a big canal, and there was a water, irrigation ditch that went over it, and they had a... it flowed over this little river. And I go out and I'd walk across it and I'd think afterwards, "My god, what if I had fallen off?" But you do those things when you're kids. And I used to, we had an old truck, and I would get behind the truck and drive it around the farm. So as kids, you really got to do a lot of things, or sat on the irrigation ditch, and I'd spend hours trying to catch minnows and climb trees. And we had a wonderful apricot tree, and I remember hanging around in the apricot tree. And we had pear trees, we had peach trees and prune trees. And when I see what's going on now, I think, "Oh my god, we could never afford it," kind of fruit that we ate and so forth. So that growing up on a farm was a wonderful experience.