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MN: Now, let me ask you a little bit about your free time and what sort of games you played. Like when you first moved into Fresno town, you're making new friends, what sort of games did you play?

BT: We just made up games. And one of the things was we made what we called a rubber gun. We'd kind of cut out a form of a gun, and we would get, like the inner tube of a car tire, and we would cut it into strips and use that as ammunition. And we would fire that at each other. [Laughs] But it was a lot of fun, but you got to watch it so you don't hit anybody in the face.

MN: Now, the guns, these rubber guns, were they made out of wood or cardboard?

BT: Wood. Wood. And then we used the clothespin to hold a, the rubber. When you shoot it you just press the clothespin and it releases the rubber. Yeah. And we had another one, when I think back on it, like in the springtime when the grasses are growing in the vacant lot, we used to grab a handful of that grass and we would throw it at each other. We'd get all, all that dirt on us. [Laughs] That's what we did.

MN: Your poor mother. Your, I guess your sister had to clean the, wash your clothes, huh?

BT: [Laughs] Yeah.

MN: What about, like roller skates, did you have roller skates?

BT: Yes. We used to skate out in the street, yeah. And then I had a friend there that, he made, he took his wheels off the skate and made a skate with only two wheels on there. So I made one too, and that was pretty, it was kind of fun. At first it was hard to, hard to stand on there because there's nothing to balance you. But I think we were ahead of the game. Nowadays they have the, what do you call those, inline skate or something like that.

MN: As a child, did you ever get any brand new store bought toys?

BT: No. I think, let's see, my mother bought me a brand new bicycle. I think I was a junior in high school, and that was the first time I had anything new, you know. I've had some toys, used toys given to us, but a new one was just a luxury. That's something we couldn't afford.

MN: How old were you when you got this brand new bicycle?

BT: I think I was a junior in high school, so I'd be about sixteen or seventeen.

MN: How did you feel when you got this bicycle?

BT: I mean, I was so proud. I mean, that, you would never find a speck of dirt on that bicycle. I just kept polishing it, this and that. Yeah, I really took good care of it.

MN: So it's like getting a brand new car.

BT: [Laughs] Yeah. Well, in those days not too many kids had cars. They're all bicycles.

MN: Now, what about when you got older, what kind of things did you do? You were talking about a crystal set. What is that?

BT: Yeah, it's a, it's a little like a radio. The only thing is you don't have tubes and things, you just have a little rock and have a little wire, what we call whiskers. And you would find different positions -- and we had a headpiece, you know -- and you'd try to find stations. You usually got about two stations out of it. Maybe if you were lucky you got three stations. Course, then we had to have a large antenna, so I ran a wire from our house to the garage for my antenna.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.