Densho Digital Archive - Miyoko Sakai Nagai Interview (denshovh-nmiyoko-01-0019)

<Begin Segment 19>

RP: So you mentioned you got the floral shop going again.

MN: We came out and then she decided, well, she wants to not do the wholesale. We weren't used to... so then she decided she's gonna have this little tiny shop on the corner, so we decided, well okay, we'll start there again. We didn't have a big refrigerator or anything. 'Cause before the shop was huge, and we had a big walk-in refrigerator, about half of this room, that my uncle, they got together and they built it, got it all together. But this time we had a little tiny, but we managed. And so then my sister, my mother decided to open it and so I, what I did was I worked with her because she was, she had gotten married, or she worked on the farm too, but we, I'd take my mother to the market. And normally we can take the regular car, which was like a two-door small Ford, and pack things in there. Well, certain days you have to, like weekends, you have to buy a little more, and if we had special orders, so I'd have to drive the truck that we had. We had a truck which was huge, that was, I think it was called International Harvester or something, big shift. And I thought, oh gosh, no power steering or no power brakes, but anyway, I managed. I had to be very careful, though. [Laughs]

RP: And how long did the flower shop run?

MN: How long, the flower shop over here? It ran through several years. Let's see, Shari and Danny, let's see, they were at the old one. We went back to the, we went back to the first shop that we, original shop, and they were, let's see, Shari was born and Danny was born there, that's back in '53, '56. And then somebody had bought the whole, whole area. Now, there was this, the stipulation of the previous owners that either sell the whole thing or nothing, so they had to tear down everything and so we moved into this little tiny place on the opposite street, opposite corner. But that was okay. And that was after, let's see, '50, 1950, let me see now... she was still small, she's got to be, let's see, got to be about six years old or so.

And then from there, I didn't help here when they opened a shop here 'cause I had a job already. I had, from the Social Services. I did some work at home at night to keep things, extra income and everything, and so I did accounting and things at nighttime. Well, then my friend said, "Why don't you go work for the board?" She said, "There's an opening." And I said, "I can't work part time. I have to be with the children." She says, "No, there's just a few hours a week." So I decided I'd go work for the L.A. Unified, and only when, I worked when they were in school, but when it was vacation, well, then I was out. But I did help when we had weddings and things, and by then, by the time they moved here, people were not having fancy, as fancy things. However, there were some places where they had big openings where they wanted big splashy things, so we'd have to come in, Fred would have to come and help after work. [Laughs] A family thing, worked out.

RP: Yeah.