<Begin Segment 5>

TI: How did you come about your name Spady? You said you just acquired that name Spady. How did you...

SK: Because when I came back, my uncle, the section foreman up at Chewelah, my father's older brother, says, "Now that you're back in the States, you should have an American name." And I agreed and he said, "Your father had a good American name. His men gave it to him because when he got to work as a section foreman, he never walked empty-handed. Always walked with the basic tool of the railroad section gang, the spade. In no time at all his men would say, 'Here comes Spade, here comes Spade.' And after a while he turned into, 'Here comes Spady, here comes Spady.'" So I acquired that name and kept it on throughout my younger days, and when I finally got into the army and became an officer, the fellow at the desk says, "You can't carry a nickname. You weren't born with that, were you?" I said, "No, I wasn't." "You can't carry that as a nickname as an officer." So I said, "Well, what do I do? Nobody knows me by any other name." And he rummaged around in his desk and come out, came out with a piece of paper. He said, "You sign here and you'll officially became, you can become Spady." So I did. That's how I became Spady. But I met a lady from New Jersey one time at a party. She was slightly hard of hearing, I guess. She didn't get the name Spady. She said, "Shady over there says this and this and..." and throughout the evening I tried to correct her, but without success. She called me Shady throughout the evening.

TI: [Laughs] That's good. Let's see, going back to your, you're eleven years old, you're in the first grade.

SK: First grade.

TI: I imagine as you acquired your English, you were advanced to...

SK: Oh yeah, very next day. Second day in school at 1B. The teacher's waiting for me at the, at the door, very second day. Grabbed me by the hand, walks me past the door, walks me past 1A, walks me past 2B, 2A. Puts me into 3B. I had completely skipped second grade. And she said, "This is your classroom." Second day. So all day long I kept waiting for that bell to ring and for the new teacher to call me. She never did. But in the, late in the afternoon she comes in with a broom in her hand, and looks around, sees me. Walks over, gives it to me. And I, I noticed that all the kids were scurrying around, straightening out the room and so forth. Oh, she wants me to sweep the room, of course. So I go to one of the corners of the room to sweep in, and she started to turn around and walk off, glanced back. Stopped, walks back to me, lowers her voice and looks around and says, "Spady, your fly is open. You know what to do." Fly, fly. Oh, she wants me to catch a fly. Because, of course I know what to do. And then she said, she repeated, "I said, Spady, your fly is open. Don't you know what to do?" Oh, she lowered her voice because she doesn't want to scare the fly away, it must be stopped somewhere nearby. But to show her I knew what to do, I slowly raised the broom to a batting position. And that's the last time I ever skipped any school. So, when I finished high school, I was twenty-one-year-old baseball playing high school senior.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.