Densho Digital Archive - Gladys Koshio Konishi Interview (denshovh-kgladys-01-0006)

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RP: Let's go back a little bit, you were talking about the, about the farm.

GK: The farm, yes.

RP: Your father's farm, and tell me about what you remember about working on the farm, what a typical day was like.

GK: Oh, goodness. Well, a typical day, I think, started out very early in the morning, and we used to, the folks used to hire a lot of laborers, and of course they'd be there early. And one, I guess, as a child, a little child, I would be out there helping Mother do whatever needed to be done, because she used to sharpen those, the hoe, and she had just finished sharpening the hoe and I grabbed it to give it to her, and it cut my heel, and they thought that I had cut my tendon. I mean, they used to really sharpen it. But I remember they would start out so early in the morning, and watching the laborers. I really don't know when we started working in the fields. I think maybe, I think a lot of people didn't think women worked in the fields, but we had regular bonnets, the old fashioned bonnets, and Mother would make jeans in the winter when we weren't out in the field, she had the treadle machine, and she'd make us girls all jeans. And we'd have these denim work shirts, and we covered ourselves so that we wouldn't get any sun on our faces, and we used to work just every day. And if it, but usually had the weekends off, but there were times when the crops were growing, they needed to be, something needed to be done, lettuce had to be done, cut or whatever. It didn't matter what day of the week it was, we worked. And so we kind of sandwiched in laundry whenever we could, and took turns cooking so that not, instead of three people going home to cook, one person went home and everybody ate together. So that was two meals a day, lunch and dinner. And breakfast we had at our own house.

RP: So you had a, you had sort of a family hour there between lunch and dinner.

GK: Yeah, we used to, yeah, we'd go home at eleven o'clock and get the meal ready for about thirteen people in one hour. [Laughs] And go home at five o'clock and have a meal ready by six o'clock, that's what we used to do.

RP: And as you grew up, did your responsibilities change on the farm? You told me that you ended up driving a truck.

GK: Oh, yes, we learned to drive that truck, as soon as we were sixteen, we were driving. And since we were truck farmers, we needed to take loads of cabbage or onions or whatever to Denver, and so my brother would send the girls with the truck because when we got to the market, they would have people, guys that would help us unload, and they would help the women, but they wouldn't help the men. So they -- [laughs] -- he sent us women. And being sixteen, of course, these guys would really help. [Laughs]

RP: [Laughs] I'm sure, I can imagine that.

GK: Yeah. So maybe sometimes we could get two loads in instead of one.

RP: Some of the other memories that you shared with me are about washing clothes on a washboard.

GK: Oh, yes, I did. When they were really, really busy and this was before we had the washing machine, I remember washing clothes on the washboard with a bar of soap, and the sheets, trying to wring out sheets and towels was just so hard. And hanging 'em on the line, because you're so tiny, and then you have this long sheet and you're pinning it here and then pinning it here and pinning it here. And so it was kind of... I don't know how long I did that, but I think we were very happy to get this putt-putt washing machine that had a wringer on it. And there were many times when we got our finger caught trying to get that towel or whatever in there, and then in would fall into a tub of water, and then we'd move that thing, the wringer, and rinse and throw it in, into a basket. But yes, I did do wash on the washtub, yeah.