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TI: Still, I'm getting a flavor of Walnut Grove, and when I went there and people told me about the bathhouses and that was always a, kind of a regular activity, going to the bathhouses. Did your family do that also?

MB: No, we had a bathtub. My father built the cement around this, I don't know, hundred gallon, what do you call those, barrels. I don't know, but they're thick enough and then he put cement around them, and then we heated the water in the tank on a daily basis and heated it with just wood, scrap wood and warmed up the water, and we took, all took separate baths. I mean, we were able to get rid of the dirty water and replenish, and like the Matsuokas, they had a fancy tile floor and a Japanese tub, cement tub, and it had a gasoline heating system.

TI: And yours was just scrap lumber, just whatever you could burn just to heat the water?

MB: Yeah.

TI: Did you ever go to the public bathhouse?

MB: No.

BT: Did you want to?

MB: Pardon me?

BT: Did you want to?

MB: Did I watch those?

BT: No, did you want to go to the public bath?

MB: Walk there, no.

BT: No, did you want to use that public bath or go see it?

MB: No, not really.

BT: Why?

MB: I don't know. We just, nothing was said, but we just never did.

BT: Was it that you would've had to go to Front Town to do it?

MB: Yeah.

BT: What was wrong with going to Front Town?

MB: I don't know. It was never mentioned. We just took our baths in our own homes and not every one of the homes had their baths. Like the Matsuokas' next door, we called it very, their bath was very fancy. It was a cement made tub and you washed yourselves outside and get in the tub to rinse yourself. But many didn't have any tubs, and I just, I don't know how those other people did, because they didn't go to the public bathhouses.

BT: So what did they do?

MB: I'm not sure if they just used buckets of water and bathed themselves. Like, you know our district attorney, Adachi? Now, they live in, in a more, can I say primitive type of living, it was called a garage area, converted into homes, and it wasn't, the homes weren't lawn surrounded. I don't know how they heat their water. It was pretty primitive, but I remember Adachi's aunt, she loved to bake and she submitted her recipe to Pillsbury or Betty Crocker, one of those, and she won and got a fancy stove in that, one of those garages, and that was so wonderful. Probably the nicest item in the house. (Narr. note: I want to add that Jeff Adachi's grandmother was a young widow who raised four young children by herself. A remarkable feat).

TI: That's a good story.

MB: Yeah.

BT: And Marion is talking about Jeff Adachi, who is San Francisco's Public Defender. (He is an elected official).

TI: Right, no, I realize that. Yeah. And so they were, they're an old Walnut Grove family, the Adachi family?

MB: Yeah. And, and the thing of it was the father died early and the mother had to support four kids by working and hoeing, weeding, must've been really tough. I really have to admire her. And I worked in the cannery my last year, well, during, going to Cal. And she was one of the ladies and, yeah, there was nobody young, as young as I was working -- these are all wives who were supporting their families. I was saving money for college. But she's, now I can see how remarkable a woman she was, supporting these four kids, and now he's a DA in San Francisco, which is tough, Willie Brown vs. whoever the other...

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.