<Begin Segment 3>

TI: So let's get started again, so early childhood memories. So when you think about your earliest childhood memories, what, what can you remember? Like can you remember the house when you were a little child?

FS: I can't remember the house, but the orchard, we were, my dad was kind of a foreman. They had nothing but prunes, picking prunes and then used to dry the prunes. And I remember that. They had a, set it on the tray, so many big tray, and then they set it out and they leave it out in the sun, let it dry up.

TI: And describe that a little bit more for me, like how many trays would be there? Would it be a few, a lot?

FS: Quite a bit. I could say, I could say fifty, I might be wrong. It might be more, because when I see it, it's just laying down on the, not on the ground, 'cause it has a little, build it up a little bit and just sit on the tray on top of there, so I could say fifty to a hundred, easy.

TI: Okay, and then from a process standpoint, so, what, they bring in boxes or barrels and they just place 'em on the trays and then they just let 'em sit there for...

FS: Yeah, after, after it's all dried up they put 'em in a box. They put 'em in a box and then they pack it again. It's in the big container that, they put 'em all in there, then they go into the, into the shed and then they start packing it into separate boxes, small boxes or something. It could be packaged.

TI: Now, I'm just guessing, I've never seen this in person, but I'm wondering, like, were there really strong smells and things like that that you can remember?

FS: Not that I, not that I remember, no.

TI: Okay, now was this something that, as you got older, you helped out with? Did you ever help out with --

FS: No, not at the, not for the prunes. 'Cause a lot of people, lot of people make a mistake between plum and prune. If you dry the plum you don't have anything left over. All you have is a seed left over. But the prune, when you dried it, it just shriveled up, and you, that's what the prune is.

TI: Okay, so it's a particular type of, well, a particular type of fruit. You have to make sure you get those.

FS: Right.

TI: I know up in Washington we get a lot of those Italian plums, so those are different? Those, if you dry those they'll just shrivel up and not be anything?

FS: Yeah. Yeah, you, if you shrivel it up a lot of those things'll be gone. Plum, anyway.

TI: And so what did your father do with, with this sort of production? What was his role with the prune making?

FS: You got me. [Laughs] That I don't, that I'm not sure of.

TI: Okay, so while your father worked with the prunes, what did your mother do?

FS: She was a cook, cooking... people that was coming down and work, work, she was doing the cooking for everybody.

TI: And so when she cooked for everyone, the workers and everything, did you get to eat with the workers?

FS: Yeah, we get to eat with them.

TI: So how many people would, would be there?

FS: You got me. I don't know how many people.

TI: But was it a lot? More than a few, or was it like one big table, or do you remember how it was?

FS: I can't remember that. I don't remember it..

TI: Okay, good.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.