<Begin Segment 3>

TI: Okay, so let's talk about your parents and what kind of work they did at Walnut Grove. So can you describe that?

LW: Well, only thing I recall is when I was born, I think they already had a restaurant. And my father did the cooking in the morning, and my mother takes over from the afternoon. Because they can't afford any help, and maybe during the lunch hour, they have this girl working part-time as a waitress, you know, one of those Japanese girls that work, live in Walnut Grove.

TI: Oh, this is interesting. I'm curious, so they switched being cooks. So your father was in the morning, your mother was later in the day. So in the morning, what would your mother do while your father was...

LW: Well, Mother trying to get some sleep, 'cause she stayed up to ten o'clock in the evening, and she had to close up. And besides that, she had to take the kids. So, but only time I guess she gets to sleep is maybe three, four hours in the morning. And my father gets up early in the morning and do all the odds and ends. But in the afternoon, he was probably taking a nap or something like that.

TI: Okay. So it's almost like a shift, they're on different shifts.

LW: They take turns, yeah.

TI: And when you think about your customers, so your father was a cook and your mother was a cook, did they ever talk about who the better cook was?

LW: I say it was my mother, was the better cook, but, well, my father only cooked mostly breakfast so, you know... but never cooked Japanese food at all (...).

TI: So let's talk about your restaurant. So what kind of food did... like if you came to Mary's Restaurant, what would the specialty of the house be? What would people like to eat?

LW: Well, maybe beef stew, and (hamburger steak). You don't see on the menu right now. No steak at all unless customer asked for it. So mostly beef stew and I can't even recall. And most of the time, (we didn't serve) rice because American (customers would rather have bread).

TI: Okay, so you're saying they're American people, so Caucasian, they're white.

LW: And those people that's working for the trucking company (were all white).

TI: And in a typical day, how many customers would the restaurant have?

LW: Maybe twelve or fourteen, something like that, lunch hour. Breakfast (customers) come and go, you know, maybe ten or eleven people. Then in the evening, it's maybe twenty people. Because they all finish work and they have to eat (for dinner).

TI: And describe the restaurant in terms of how it was laid out with, you know, were there tables, a counter?

LW: Well, it's mainly, in the front of the restaurant was a counter, because it's easier for the waitress to (wait on). And we have (tables), other side of the room, it's more like a, quote, "dining room," but we (hardy) used it. (...) And that's where the workers would kind of socialize after they eat. We had a fireplace stove there, so they played cards there. That's about the only recreation they had.

TI: And in addition to food, did your, did the restaurant serve, like, drinks like alcohol?

LW: No, only thing we had was beer, mostly beer. Because, well, we had wine, but hardly any people, they drink mostly beer, no hard liquor.

TI: And so on the main floor, was the restaurant...

LW: And the main restaurant, plus we had a soda fountain in the front, kind of a hole in the wall kind.

TI: Oh, so describe that. Who, as a soda fountain, who ran the soda fountain?

LW: Well, whoever is handy, convenient. I mean, my mother would be going back and forth, you know, she'd be cooking or waiting on the tables. So if the customer wants some ice cream or something like that, she goes up there.

TI: Now for the soda fountain, was that... who were the customers for the soda fountain?

LW: Well, mostly kids.

TI: Some kids in the neighborhood.

LW: Yeah, the kids in the neighborhood that lived there, you know. Ice cream cone, something like that. It (only) cost a nickel or something like that, reasonable.

TI: Okay, good.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.