<Begin Segment 9>

MN: Did your older brother take you into Missoula to see movies?

RN: I used to tag along with him once in a while, not all the time, but once in a while he, I would tag along with them and we'd pick up a hakujin friend someplace. Yeah, I remember, I don't remember ever going to a movie house. I really don't. I don't remember ever going to a movie house or...

MN: What did you do in Missoula?

RN: Huh?

MN: What did you do in, when your brother brought you into Missoula, when you went into the town of Missoula what did you do?

RN: Nothing. I did, sometimes I used to go because my older brother's friends had younger brothers and I would, and I don't know what we used to do. We didn't do much, anyway. Summertime we used to go down to the river all the time and just play along the river's edge. I remember when, I was about six years old and my American friends, kids would come over to my farm, we'd get together and we'd take the one and only dirt road. We used to walk all the way down toward the schoolhouse way, and there's a slaughterhouse out on the river. See, this side of Missoula they have this, the river coming through the town. It goes, it was a pretty big river. I can't think of the name of the river, but we used to go down to the river, and the slaughterhouse is on, was on the river and when they used to kill the animals, the pigs, mostly pigs -- I think we, I think I saw 'em kill a cow once, only once, but they, I know they used to keep cattle in the back, but anyway, we'd see 'em kill pigs all the time and they used to cut their guts open, take all that stuff like that. They'd pick a few things out and they'd throw the rest of the stuff into the river. [Laughs] Oh, it was primitive. There's no health inspector, you know, no such thing as a health inspector or higher, somebody to look, check in on everybody. Those guys, they do whatever they want. They throw all the guts into the river. God.

MN: Where did they store the meat? Was it in an icebox? Did they have iceboxes there?

RN: No icebox. Well, it's just a cooler. Summertime you have to suffer through. Wintertime you don't need a cooler 'cause you, the weather gets cold right away. So during the hot summer months they, well, from June or July up until middle of September it's pretty hot and they, naturally, they got a, what they call a cooler, maybe a fan in there, call it cooler, but no such thing as modern refrigeration in there. And every now and then we'd be, we'd be outside playing on the side of the road and this truck from the slaughterhouse would come by our house. They used to have these parts of beef, half a cow or something, throw it in the truck with a canvas over it, they're going into the town. But no such thing as refrigeration truck or anything like that.

MN: During the summertime did you have treats like ice cream?

RN: Never had ice cream, soda pop, or nothin' like that. Only time I used to eat ice cream was when I went with my father to sell the vegetables from the truck. The ice cream truck would come by, and that's the only time my father used to buy me ice cream cones, five cents, a big ice cream cone. That's the only time I used to eat ice cream, 'cause otherwise, nobody got iceboxes, no such thing as refrigeration. Yeah, it's very primitive.

MN: Do you have any other memories of Montana?

RN: No, 'cause we, I left there when I was about seven. When I hit Seattle I remember I was eight.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.