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MN: Now going back to your farming, now, Imperial Valley is mostly desert.

MT: Well, there's nothing there, really. There was a town called Brawley, that was the biggest one. And then they had Niland, which is right there by Salton Sea, bottom of the Salton Sea. Then you had Imperial, it's a real small town, and then El Centro. El Centro, Brawley is the bigger, then Calexico was small. Then they had a little place called Holtville, that was more towards Yuma way. There was other smaller place like Seeley and things like that, but they're just maybe one, one little store or gas pump, things like that. Just your Brawley, El Centro and Calexico, Holtville was about the biggest place, all the rest are too small.

MN: Were most of the farmers Japanese Americans?

MT: Well, Isseis, mostly Isseis. Because they're the ones that opened up Imperial Valley. The kids, like us, we're really just helping, kids. We're just helping the parents do the work. But we didn't know how to farm like that.

MN: So where do you get your water from?

MT: From the Colorado River. The water used to come from the Colorado River, mostly to Imperial Valley. Then they made the All American Canal, and that's bringing more water from the Colorado River. That ran from near Calexico all the way towards where we were in Mt Signal area. And then from there, it came back toward Salton Sea, the excess water. So that's why the Salton Sea was getting bigger and bigger, because all the farming and the water there.

MN: Now can you share with us how you filtered your water to drink?

MT: Oh, we had what they called a sand filter, and then you put the water into a bucket, and then you have a tube that came out from the sandstone, and you have a bucket on the bottom. You suck on the pipe to get the water coming, and then you put that down in the bucket and that's your drinking water, cooking water. And that's it. All the rest of it, you just use it straight out of the ditch. Or you get it from the ditch into a pond, because the horses got to drink water, because we had two mules. And they have to have water, the dog's got to have water, chickens got to have water, so we would just use that straight, don't do anything for 'em, no filters or nothing. Only one is for the humans.

MN: How often did you have to clean the sandstone?

MT: Well, at least once, once a week, because water in the Imperial Valley is, when it comes into the farm, it's muddy-like. It's sort of tan colored instead of clear. So you got to make the water settle, and then you take that water and then you filter it. And that, even then, you get a lot of the dirt in the water, so you got to take the sandstone, otherwise sandstone can't filter, it plugs up. So we used to use a, what they call a tawashi, it's a brush. I don't know if everybody knows about it, but you wash it off, you rinse it off, and you put it back in the filter again. That was the way we got our drinking water.

MN: Well, I know the Imperial Valley is also really hot. How do you keep your food cool?

MT: They have what they call an ice box, and the ice man used to come around once or twice a week, and you put, buy a twenty-five pound cube of ice, and you put it in the top to get the cold air to come down, and you never open the top where the ice is, 'cause the ice would melt too fast. And that was the way everything was kept. Otherwise, you don't cook too much, so it'd be too much leftover. If you're going to go to Japanese school, and we're gonna have chicken or something for the lunch, they we just cook enough so that they had one or two piece for the kids to take to school, and that was keep it cool in the -- not refrigerator, but ice box. You have it in the bottom of it, and it'll stay cool and it won't spoil. That was the way we used to keep things from spoiling, just use the ice box.

MN: Let me go back to your farming. And you mentioned this earlier, like your father was first to have cantaloupes go to market. So what if, like, the season is almost over, the prices are going down, what do you do with the leftover cantaloupes?

MT: Give it to the cows. Well, the cows were, there were a lot of, like I say, immigration officers used to come around, they can have it. Once the prices are too cheap, you can't ship it, it's no use. So you make your money early so that when it gets cheap, you can quit. Then you disc up the field, and then we have to, what they call flood it. We used to get the, have two furrows made, gee, I would say about twenty, twenty-five feet apart, and then we let the water run between the furrows. The reason you do that is you're going to always get the grass seeds. So you flood it, and then when it gets hot in July like that, all your grass seeds will germinate. Then when we come back from one month in Los Angeles and one month in El Centro, we go back to Imperial Valley around beginning of September or maybe a little earlier, then you disc up the field and then your grass that hasn't had time to get seed, so you disc it up and then you don't have too much weeds when your crop is coming. 'Cause you have to pay the people to come and hoe the thing. In those days, they usually use what they call a short handle hoe. They take the long handle hoe and cut it so only about one foot of handle, so you bend over all day cutting the weeds because you don't want to be hurting the plants that you got growing, otherwise you'll cut the cantaloupe. That was back breaking work. My mother and father used to go out there and hand... you don't go slow, they have to lead the people, the Mexicans. So my father would be in the front and my mother would be in the back, and they got to stay in between there and keep up, and all these Mexicans got to work that way. That's a very back breaking job, when you're bent over. Now, it is against the law to have short handle hoe. You cannot use it. Too many people were getting back problems. Can you imagine those poor Mexican people who were doing that? But that's the way they used to learn to work.

MN: So when the farmers were ready to just disc everything up, and you had this neighbor with the watermelons, did you go and enjoy the watermelons?

MT: Oh, yeah. Well, we had the cantaloupe, he wants cantaloupe, he can come out in the field and pick all he wants, or you go to his place, watermelons, and we used to go out there and pick a lot of them. And then we put it in the shed where it will stay cool so that it won't get overripe too fast. Then when we're out in the field, too, you never ate the whole watermelon. You only ate the heart of the watermelon, 'cause that's the sweetest part. So we go out in the field and break it open, dig out the heart, eat as much as we want, and then take the rest of it home.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.