<Begin Segment 4>

MU: Okay. Now, you grew up in the Exeter area?

HW: Exeter -- Visalia area.

MU: Visalia?

HW: Uh-huh.

MU: Then you went to local schools there?

HW: Oh yes. Uh-huh.

MU: And, were there many Nikkeis there at that time?

HW: There were like -- there were a couple of families in the elementary school. There were half a dozen families in the high school.

MU: Uh-huh. Who were your neighbors at that time? Other Nikkeis, or other nationalities?

HW: No, mostly hakujin. All of our -- after school, playing around with, hakujin because Nikkei families were spread out so much. You have to kinda go to...

MU: Yeah. And, you talked about meeting up with an Italian family? Was a neighbor of yours.

HW: Yeah. That was a...

MU: Can you tell us a little bit about that lady? You were saying she taught you to, how to make spaghetti and you, in turn taught your mother to make spaghetti.

HW: [Laughs] Yeah, yeah. Mrs. Mangini. The Manginis were our neighbors and they had two sons, and...

MU: About your age?

HW: One was older and one was my age. Yeah. I noticed that every summer she would -- they would grow a lot of tomatoes. And she would put out chicken wire, out in the backyard, off the ground, and then put the tomatoes on there and sun dry the tomatoes. And that's how she got the tomatoes for all year round. And, she'd always invite me to have some -- you know, stay and have supper with them or something with the kids. And then one day, she says, "I'm going to give you the recipe and you tell your mother how to make spaghetti." [Laughs] So that's what I took over to -- we used bacon and tomato, sun-dried tomatoes, bacon.

MU: Real authentic Italian spaghetti.

HW: Yeah. [Laughs]

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.