Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Norm Hayashi Interview
Narrator: Norm Hayashi
Interviewer: Virginia Yamada
Location: Emeryville, California
Date: March 12, 2019
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-468-12

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VY: Okay, so back to, you were a kid growing up in the nursery, and then you went to school and then you went to Los Angeles and then you came back. And at that time, did you decide to work at the nursery?

NH: No. I dropped out of L.A. State, I only had a year to go.

VY: Okay.

NH: And I changed my major because I was just fed up with engineering things, and I changed to social sciences, perhaps being a counselor or something like that, I don't know why. I thought I was (being) more humanized, but my junior year, I took physical psychology or something, there was only ten, twelve of us, and the teacher was like a, up there like a dictator, up to the podium and everything. And our lab reports had to be right on. If there was a grammatical mistake or something, you lose almost a whole letter point and everything like that, and I said, "That's crazy." I don't know what's wrong with me, I have a problem with rules, structure, I can't understand where I got that from, really. Then my friends were all graduating, and most of them were getting married, it's at that, kind of a sequence of events, I said, "What's the sense?" I did all that stuff, I did laundry and all that. So I came home (to Hayward) and actually, at that time, I came home and I didn't know what to do. And I was actually thinking of going up to Alaska, because Alaska fishing was booming at that time, and I wanted (the kind of experience) that looked exciting. But I (needed money) and the job (at the nursery) was driving a truck. And then after I finished my route or deliveries, I'd come back and I'd help my dad build greenhouses, which I later realized I really liked.

VY: You liked the building?

NH: Yeah, construction and everything. Grew to love it. Then I kind of stuck around, I really don't know why, but I noticed he had, my dad and my uncle had a lot of respect. And I guess what kept me there is they didn't press me or anything, or, "You got to do the nursery," this and that. After five years of driving around... I had a good time driving around.

VY: Let's talk about the time when you were driving. So you were driving for the nursery, for your dad's nursery?

NH: Yes, delivery.

VY: And geographically, what's the span that you covered? Like what's the northmost city you went to?

NH: Up to Centerville at that time, down to Monterey, this way just enough to... like I said, we didn't have a lot of clients, we didn't have to. Then when Safeway came to us to grow for 'em certain things, that expanded my delivery. At that time, chain stores were coming in, a group called Handymen, so when they came in, we're obligated, Woolworth, too, Woolworth's, we're obligated to service all their stores in our immediate area or whatever, outlying. In that case, I went as far as Crescent City, down south to Bakersfield, going to Monterey. And when Safeway took over there, they would set up -- this is before they had their plant section, this is prelude to it, they would set up like a three-week localized, several, half dozen stores in the area and put different plants in there on the parking lot, and attract people. So we serviced that part, and that's when I started driving long ways.

VY: What kind of plants did these different stores want? What were you transporting?

NH: At that time we had various garden-type plants that, like I say, hanging baskets and starter things. And then when it came Christmastime, we sold the poinsettias, lots of poinsettias.

VY: What's it like to grow a poinsettia?

NH: In the old days it was difficult. I remember we'd get the mother plants, big mother plants And at that time, they didn't even have a round, what they call a can, they had the square cans, I don't know, that tofu used to come in? I don't know if you remember that. We'd put the mother plants in there, the big starters, and they'd bloom out, and we'd take cuttings off of that and start our plants. Our finished product was, what we called a six-inch plant, and probably about twenty-four or thirty inches high, twenty-four inches. So that was our main crop. So it was difficult at that time because there wasn't much hybrids available, and we had to stake each flower. The flower was... with a bamboo stake, and we had to cover each flower with tissue paper, soft tissue paper, protection in transit. That was one of my first jobs, and I think that's when I started to have real respect for my dad and my uncle. They had a shipment going out the next day, so just my dad and my uncle and I, we stayed over and we're working by the lights of the greenhouse to prepare the ship. And we worked 'til ten o'clock at night, our dinner was a box of doughnuts. [Laughs] We didn't take breaks. That's another thing, when I took over, I made sure my employees had breaks. And I didn't look for breaks, I was just hungry. But that's the way they were. And they helped each other. We didn't say much, but this was something that came to me later, is when you're working with family, you get this feeling of dependability with them, and you don't worry about what they do and all that kind of stuff.

VY: You know you can count on them, they'll do the work.

NH: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.