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KL: So growing up, you mentioned that the pool was kind of a big deal. In what other ways were you part of community life? You said your folks helped start the Nazarene church.

KP: Yes. They... well, that was basically what we did as far as the community was concerned with my parents, was involved in the church, and of course, they were involved with the school. And then down the line my mother also worked in the post office in Lone Pine. She worked in the post office in Lone Pine for almost twenty years, and she had picked up enough Spanish that that helped her to be able to translate for the Mexican people that were here then. They were the early, some of the early families, the descendants of the early families that had come here.

KL: Where did your mom learn that Spanish?

KP: In school, in high school. She took Spanish, picked it up, and just expanded on it. She was much better at Spanish than I ever was, that's for sure. I didn't pick up much of it even though I took it in school also.

KL: What else did she like to do? She had a gift for languages and piano.

KP: And piano, she played the piano a lot. And any minute they had, they went fishing, they went out fishing. Because she just loved that, and then when we would go to the city, to my grandparents' they would also do surf fishing (at Venture), especially in the summer, and then we would get to play at the beach, run up and down the beach or swim in the ocean, until I got old enough to be brave enough to actually swim in the ocean, which I did.

KL: Can you reveal to us any of their favorite Sierra fishing spots?

KP: Oh. Well, we fished locally a lot, we fished at Tuttle Creek and Lone Pine Creek and all of the creeks along here. They didn't go... well, they went to Mammoth in that area once in a while, but not nearly as often as they did. And they also, in the winter they would fish in the (Owens) river, and they loved catfish, and they'd catch catfish and perch. And so we did a lot of that. But as far as being involved in other parts of the community, they weren't involved with politics or anything like that. My husband and I were the ones that got into all of that because of our business, because of the motel business.

[Interruption]

KL: So tell us more about the Nazarene church. Who do you recall, who was involved in it, or the process of starting it up?

KP: It was the (Bill) Skinners and the Smiths, Foster Smith. (Mrs.) Floy Smith was my midwife, and they had an Arabian farm down where the 4-H group is now. He had, he raised horses down there. They wanted to have a church, and they had a little building behind Joseph's Market that probably was actually a house earlier, and they made it into the first church before they were eventually able to build their own church, which my parents, I'm sure, helped a lot with that and the financing for it and so forth, as they gained more people to come to the church. It was very, very active. Very active church with the youth groups and so forth, my kids went to the youth groups when they were young.

KL: Was its founding during your lifetime?

KP: The church? I was really small when they had the church behind the, Joseph's, I barely remember that. I remember that building, but vaguely. And all of the events that you do all year, the Easter and the Christmas programs and all of those things.

KL: What were those like?

KP: Oh, they were really fun. Put costumes on, I had to be Mary I don't know how many times. [Laughs]

KL: Was that a hardship or exciting?

KP: It was fun. It was really fun. And it was always fun to help with it. I taught Sunday school, too, down the line.

KL: What were Easter celebrations like when you were a kid?

KP: Well, they were very meaningful. It was just very meaningful. Sometimes they'd do the Palm things, for the Palm Sunday, and the breakfast, early breakfast at dawn for the Christ rising from the dead, that kind of thing.

KL: Where were those morning services held? Were they at the building?

KP: Well, usually kind of at the mouth of Lone Pine canyon where the Lone Pine tree was. They did it right there because that's a good spot for the sunrise.

KL: Do you remember any of the ministers of that church when you were young?

KP: I'm trying to remember the one that married us, I can't even remember his name. Mel Rich was the one that was very active when my kids were growing up, and he's still a very good friend of ours.

KL: You mentioned the Skinners as people who were involved in founding the church. Tell me about that family.

KP: The daughters, Ruby Skinner was... Ruby and Bill were the main ones, and then Evelyn Nelson and her three daughters are still very involved in the church. (Evelyn) Nelson was Ruby Skinner's sister, and she's still alive and she's over a hundred now. She's a hundred and one or two. Can't keep track.

KL: Yeah, at a certain point it all just is impressive.

KP: I'm eighty.

KL: So they were closer to your parents' age, Ruby and Bill were?

KP: Yeah, same age. They haven't been gone -- Ruby hasn't been gone that long.

KL: Do you know if they had help from the denomination? I don't know a lot about the Nazarene tradition, is it pretty local?

KP: Well, it might have started out as a mission, a mission church, and they probably had some money from the mission, because they had an active missionary group.

KL: You said that church started in a house behind Joseph's, but where did they go after that?

KP: Well, I don't know for sure. I think they had one burn down. They might have had one burn down where they built the new church. That's very vague in my mind. I'm losing it. I'm losing it. [Laughs] And then they built the brick church, but I couldn't tell you when. It had to be in '50, early '50s, because my kids went to Sunday school there. And Martin was born in '57, and then my other son (Gary) was born in '53.

KL: When did you start school?

KP: When did I start school?

KL: Was there a preschool that you went to?

KP: No, not preschool. Kindergarten, I went to kindergarten in Lone Pine, Lone Pine elementary kindergarten, which was a little building where the nursery school is now, the preschool. There was a little building there. Ruby Branson was my teacher, and she's still alive. She's a hundred and something. [Laughs] It was her first year, I think, when we were in kindergarten there. And then we moved into the big old school and spent most of our elementary years there until junior high when we went over to the high school. But I was in the fourth grade when Pearl Harbor happened, and I would have been... let's see, seven, eight. And then when Manzanar, when I came to Manzanar, I would have been eight or nine, probably nine and in Camp Fire Girls.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.