<Begin Segment 4>

TI: Okay, so let's come back to Seattle. So your dad did this, and Mom did this in the summer, but eventually they settled more just in Seattle, and I think from your oral history and Auntie Hannah's oral history, they talked about how your dad kind of worked, I think in a card shop helping out there. But eventually he started managing a hotel on Yesler. So do you remember that place and, like, the name of it and where it was located?

VI: You mean Sprague Hotel?

TI: Yeah, tell me about Sprague Hotel.

VI: That was on Yesler Way, and it was between, it was on Sixth Avenue. And Sixth Avenue was at the peak of the Yesler Hill. And Fir, they came down to form a triangle at Yesler, and that's where the hotel was.

TI: So it's on this, kind of, intersection of Fir and Yesler, right above Sixth Avenue? And so just for people who don't know Seattle, so Yesler is a main, kind of, street that goes all the way down to the waterfront, and sort of begins down at the waterfront, and then through Pioneer Square. And as I go up there, like Second and Third Avenue are, it's kind of a messy area in terms of lots of streets coming together. They have that bridge, right, over Third Avenue, to get up to where you are. Because it's a pretty steep hill coming up from Pioneer Square up to Sixth Avenue.

VI: We used to walk down to the waterfront. Main Fish was there, and what we used to do was get barrel, things that holds the barrel together?

TI: The barrel staves or whatever those metal...

VI: They put a net out there, gunny sack net, we would go down to Main Fish and they'd give us salmon heads. And we'd go down to the waterfront and the piers, we'd let down these nets along the pilings and catch shrimp. And we'd catch enough shrimp that we could, on the way back, there was a place that bought the shrimp for ten cents a pound.

TI: Wow, that's quite a bit. Did you make quite a bit of money doing that?

VI: Well, we made enough to buy a hamburger that costs five cents. So that was lot of our summertime activity, going down to the waterfront. But it was a steep hill to go down and climb up.

TI: And how did you learn how to do things like that? I mean, did someone like the older boys teach you, or did an Issei teach you how to do that?

VI: I have no idea. They must have.

TI: Well, who would you do this with? I mean, when you think about that time, was it with a group of boys or was it just one or two?

VI: I think a couple of us did that. What we would do is if we get the ten cents, we'd go up on Jackson Street and where the Saigon, Little Saigon is now.

TI: So like on Twelfth?

VI: Twelfth and Jackson. On the north side of Twelfth and Jackson, they had a little hamburger shop, and everybody swears that was the best hamburger that they ever had, because they cooked it in grease. It was really tasty. So when you're talking about the old timers, they always remember that hamburger shop that was there.

TI: And just like, kind of a greasy spoon place?

VI: Yeah, the more grease there was, the better the taste is.

TI: And back then, did they have, like, French fries, too, or was it just hamburgers?

VI: Just a thin bun with this greasy hamburger. Five cents.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.