<Begin Segment 7>

FA: And what did you do?

SS: Well, I, in those days I went to school. Grammar school. I was in the sxith grade then.

FA: What school?

SS: Central School. That was right in the middle of town. It was on Madison Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenue.

FA: It's gone now.

SS: It's totally gone. That whole area is now occupied by I-5.

FA: Do you recall your first address?

SS: Yes. First address that -- well, after we found a place, was 811 1/2 Spruce Street. We were on the second floor, that's why that half.

FA: And did you move around? Did you have other addresses?

SS: Oh, yes. I have a list of those addresses. I must have moved at least forty times.

FA: Why so often?

SS: Well, because we got into the apartment house and rooming house business and we got into that quite, well, again through Furuyas. The Furuya bank had taken over possession of an apartment building because they were, the persons owning the, or operating that building had not kept up the agreed upon payments and the bank had to take over that building. And the bank came to my mother and to me and asked us if we would take over the management of that apartment building. That was on Seventeenth and Yesler. In those days, Yesler had a cable car.

FA: Really?

SS: Yeah. And the cable car ran all the way from downtown, Third Avenue, and it ran over the hills, up until... well, it reached practically, it was at Lake Washington.

FA: And you went to Central School and then what middle school did you go to?

SS: Well, Central School, I graduated Central and then I went to Broadway High School.

FA: What did you study there? What caught your interest at Broadway High School?

SS: Well, that was... as long as I lived in a certain area, I had to go to Broadway. There wasn't any choice.

FA: No, of course. But in your studies there, what most interested you in your studies?

SS: Oh, at Broadway, I enjoyed the shop courses. Auto repair, electrical house wiring, things like that.

FA: Why?

SS: Well, somehow hooking up copper wires and running electricity through, I enjoyed doing that. Also, those days, radio was just coming into popular demand and I had learned how to make a crystal set. And I don't know how many salt containers with Morton salt, we used, wind so many coil, so many times on that thing and put taps on it so I could tune the thing to the right station and tuning was very rude, those crystal sets of those days, but I had no difficulty mastering the art of producing crystal sets. It required no intelligence, but at least I could follow instructions.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.