<Begin Segment 7>

TI: So you have the bathhouse. When you would go to the grocery store, you talked about earlier how sometimes if someone ordered a steak, you would go to the store to pick up a steak.

LW: Yeah, because there were, hardly any customer ordered steak, they couldn't afford that kind of stuff. But we can't carry that kind of inventory, you know. So whenever some special customer come and ask for steak, then I used to run across the street, that's the grocery store, the meat department, (buy the steak) and come back, serve it to the customers.

TI: So which grocery store was that you would go to?

LW: That's the Kuwabara grocery store.

TI: So they had meat and what...

LW: Yeah, they had meat, dry goods, and everything. And it's right across the street from us.

TI: And describe the town in terms of, was that the main grocery store?

LW: No, there was five grocery stores in that little, you know how small it was. But the Kuwabaras and Hayashi was the biggest, the one we went to see. They're about the biggest, rest of 'em are kind of a small mom and pop operation.

TI: Good. You mentioned your older brother who'd like to go to the pool hall. Now, where was that located? Was that in the...

LW: That's, remember I told you about that barber shop there? That's where they had the two pool table there. And they used to get, friends get together after school, couple hours they played.

TI: And so were you ever old enough to go play pool, too?

LW: No, they won't let us there, we're too young yet. They keep it the certain age, high school kids or something. Besides that, we can't afford it anyway.

JS: Who ran the pool hall?

LW: The Koga. Remember Dix Koga?

TI: And so when the older boys got together and played pool, did they also do things like smoking and things like that?

LW: Yeah.

TI: And gambling?

LW: Well, not gambling, but I think the older people smoked, but I don't recall that, because I hardly went in there.

TI: So did your, your parents ever talk about those kind of things like, "Louie, we don't want you to smoke, we don't want you to do this..." did they ever have those conversations?

LW: Well, they mentioned that, but we never spoke anyway. In fact, all this customers that we had, they all smoke and drink. But seemed like they never bothered us. Because I never smoked there at all.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.