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MN: Now, you talked about going camping, and what other ways did the Boy Scout Troop 100 contribute towards the war effort?

RW: Well, one of the things we did, which took a long time, was we had a paper drive. The government brought in large semi trailers, open trailers, and we went all over camp for months and months collecting paper, newspapers, and then after we got the big truckload we took it into Parker and loaded it into a boxcar there. I don't know where they took it, but they took it someplace for their, recycle it, I guess.

MN: Now, you had this one incident when you were taking the recyclables and after you worked really hard you went to a restaurant in town, I guess this is at Parker? Was it in Parker?

RW: Yeah.

MN: What happened at the restaurant?

RW: Well, it was right across the street from the train station where the boxcar was parked, so once we loaded up the boxcar we said, let's go get something to eat and drink, so we went right across the street and it was a little restaurant there, so about six of us went in there. We had our Boy Scout uniforms on, and we sat there and the waitress kept going back and forth, just ignored us. So the scoutmaster said, "Ma'am, can we get some service?" She just came right out and said, "You know, I'm sorry, I can't serve you. Why don't you people just leave?" So one of the guys cursed and he grabbed the saltshaker or something, but the scoutmaster said, "No, no, no. Don't cause any trouble. We don't want any trouble." There were some other adult men in there, so he actually caused a lot of trouble for us, so we left. They didn't want us there, even though we were helping with the war effort. And I'm sure they knew what we were doing there. They're not blind.

MN: How did that make you feel?

RW: Well it didn't make me feel good. I mean, we were all pretty upset over it because we thought we were doing something that would be acceptable to the people, to the white people. We are doing something to help them, but apparently it wasn't enough. And then not too long after that I guess the farmers there were having labor problems, so they took all the kids from school to their cotton fields and we picked cotton for them, and I don't remember if we were supposed to get paid or the school was getting paid, but we never got paid for it. But the boys and the girls all went there and we picked, we had the big, long cotton picking bags that you drag, and we picked a lot of cotton that couple days. So we, again we helped them, but they didn't help us by having that attitude. I was very disappointed, very upset with them because I thought I was doing something right. But you think, well, maybe I wasn't doing something right. Maybe I didn't have to do all that.

MN: This cotton picking, was, were they making you pick cotton during your school time?

RW: Yeah, I think it was during school time because there was, the whole class was there picking cotton in the daytime.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.