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KL: I've been forgetting to introduce the tapes. This is tape three, so far, of an interview with Kerry Powell here at Manzanar, September 16, 2013, and Rose had a couple questions from the conversation.

RM: Yeah. Kerry, when you were talking about growing up in Keeler for the first few years of your life, then living in Lone Pine for almost the rest of your life, I know that when I was growing up, the dust on the lake was a huge problem even when I was a child. And I was wondering if you have a recollection of when that started or when it came to the national consciousness, I guess you would say. Do you remember lake dust being an issue when you were a young girl in Keeler?

KP: Definitely. This was a big issue because when it would kick up like that, it was really thick, you couldn't even see, and you're breathing it. But I also was aware that people lived in Keeler. Maybe they didn't get it as much as we did, because it didn't blow that direction as often as we did. Because they've lived there all their lives and they're still alive, do you know what I'm saying? And so they weren't as affected by it as we thought we would be. I had questions about them re-watering the lake because I thought the original idea was shallow flooding, and it was gonna smell really bad. And it was going to be a waste of time and money because it would evaporate so quickly, so I didn't see that it was really going to do that much good. But it has, it has done a lot of good. It's been really different and better. And then I found out just a few years ago that Inyokern and Ridgecrest (90 miles south) were suffering also from the dust blowing south, and they just really hated it. They were really thrilled when they found out we were going to get water on that lake to cut down some of that dust. We still have some, but nothing like what we had before. It was hard to describe it when it would really blow from the south, it would just be really thick, you couldn't see anything. It was really miserable to live with. (Not really so often but bad when it did because we usually have such clear air up here.)

RM: Thank you.

KP: Okay.

RM: I guess I was also curious, you mentioned the Skinner family a number of times because they helped found the Nazarene church with your parents, it sounds like. I was wondering if you know anything about when the Skinners came to Lone Pine. (The men were always involved in the local mines and there are still some descendants in Darwin, below Keeler.)

KP: But no, I really don't, I don't know. I would assume they came probably about the same time that my parents came, because I'm not sure if their antecedents were here before that or not. I'm really not sure. I'm sorry, I just don't know.

RM: That's fine. I'm jumping around a bit.

KP: That's okay.

[Narrator note: Also my father Clarence Christenson took 2 summers off from Bartlet Plant to work in the Sierra for the Forest Service when I was 14 and 15. We stayed in their log cabin at Tunnel Ranger Station, where my mom Ruth tended to the mountain phone line. The Ranger Station was about a mile from the Tunnel Air Strip. My sister Luella and I enjoyed fishing up there for the golden trout with our folks before we were flown out to Lone Pine to go back to school. The folks came out later in September.]

RM: You were talking about how you went to Pasadena and Nazarene College and you were there for six months while your soon-to-be husband was fighting, or, well, taking photos, but at war in Korea.

KP: Yes.

RM: I was wondering if you could describe what it felt like for you. Were you nervous?

KP: Oh, yes, oh, yes. He called me one time there in the middle of the night, and my dorm mother had to come and get me up. She was really nice about it, but he did call me in the middle of the night. But I was engaged, but I was not married, because he wanted me to get married before he even went, and I said, "I'm too young and I'm not going to do this." I don't want to be a war widow, is what I was thinking. And, of course, he came home safely. But it could have been the other way around, obviously. No, I was busy with school so I didn't think about it a whole lot except from his letters and what he would tell me how lonesome he was, and I tried to write to him, but I didn't write to him nearly as often as he wrote to me, which was kind of sad.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.