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RP: Now you started, you first lived on May Street.

PF: Uh-huh.

RP: And then you moved in 1940 to the house on...

PF: Home Street.

RP: ...Home Street.

PF: Uh-huh.

RP: And share with us what you know about, about the house on Home Street.

PF: Well, it was built by the Watersons, one of the Watersons in 1897, I guess there was a big scandal about the Watersons, and I don't know whether they had to move or, or just what. But when they did, the city bought the house. And so when, in 1940, before my dad enlisted in the Navy, we had a chance to buy it. Or he did. And then they found out that it had an artesian well underneath it so that deal was off. And so we rented it instead, for sixty years. My mother was there for sixty years. And they always took care of it. The city would come, any problem. They painted it, they painted the outside, and they fixed the roof or replaced the roof. They were very good owners, landowners. And it was a huge lot. So my dad had chickens and a turkey that grew to be forty-six pounds or something like that before they butchered it. And it was so big that they had half of it, they baked, and the other half they had smoked. [Laughs] And I can remember Dad getting these little tiny chicks at the (...) feed store, boxes of little chicks. And then we had laying hens and eggs that we sold, and my brother and I found a chicken wandering one day -- it was a pullet (...) and we named it Wandy. It was a pet chicken. And one day it disappeared and we never knew what happened to it but I think it was that night we had chicken for dinner and I couldn't eat it. [Laughs]

RP: Might have been Wandy.

PF: My mother swore it wasn't Wandy but I kind of wondered. Yeah, so...

RP: Tell me what, what were your first impressions when you moved into that house?

PF: Oh, it was so spooky. I remember one of the first nights there was in a little room that they called the trunk room, and that was where I slept. And I could look out the window at the head of my bed and it was, oh, lightning and thunder. I was petrified. And then later years went to a reunion and one of my classmates that had come to a Halloween party at our house asked me if my mother still lived in that spooky old house. So, I wasn't the only one that thought it was spooky. But, you know, it was, it was just big. And I was raised in a tiny little house. (...) And that big old house was not anything I was used to and there were so many rooms and the floors creaked, and the ceilings were very high. And it was just like you'd see in spooky movies. [Laughs] I got used to it, though. (...) And my brother did, too. However, we slept in the same room later on. We had twin beds (...) and I can remember jumping back and forth on, on the beds. And it went crashing to the ground and Mom and Dad were downstairs. Dad came running up there to see what in the heck had happened. Like the roof had fallen in. [Laughs] Oh dear.

RP: Can you give us a maybe just a brief tour of the house in your mind?

PF: Yes. There was a back porch and Mom and Dad went dump-digging in the old dumps in old ghost towns, especially in Nevada. And all the walls were covered wrought iron stuff. Things like muffin tins and, and I remember the thing they put in a cow's nose to lead it and things like that. And then into the kitchen it was where we had the dining room table (...) the kitchen was kind of rectangular, it was rectangular. Lot of cupboards on one side. And the pass through to the, what was at the time the Watersons lived there I guess it was a dining room. Because it had a swinging door. (The) pass through (was) under some glass cabinets where you could pass the food across to the dining room. And then that became the living room, big living room when my parents moved there. And then to the left before you go into the dining room was the only bathroom in the house. It had a cast iron tub. Then next to that was the bedroom, then at the other end of the living room, you turn and go into the hallway, a hallway that had stairs that went upstairs to the right of that was the big front room, bedroom, which in early days I guess was a parlor, because it had its own door to the (front) porch. And then you go upstairs and at the head of the stairs was my bedroom, later on when I became a teenager. And then down the hall to my brother's big room which was over the living room (...). And then the trunk room that I talked about was the room that was over the bathroom. Then there was a big bedroom over the kitchen.

[Interruption]

PF: And that bedroom I remember the kitchen stove had an insulated pipe about this big around that went up through the ceiling, through that bedroom, and out through the ceiling. It was a vent pipe and it was warm. And there was one of those from the living room where there was a stove at one time, oil stove, and that had a pipe that went up through that room, too. And, and then, oh, and upstairs over the back porch was a sleeping porch. And that's the tour of the eleven rooms. [Laughs]

RP: Thank you so much. You said a sleeping porch. Was, did you ever use it?

PF: Oh yes, yes. It had a screens all around two sides, and doors that came down. Also had a trap door. You could come up the back stairs which were about this wide and if you weren't careful you'd fall. Up the back stairs and then there was this door that came down. And you had to lift that up, lift another door up, and they fit like this and you held 'em open with a hook and eye. And then the doors on all the windows flipped up against the ceiling and they were held with a hook and eye. And there was four I believe on that one side and then there were like five or six on the other side. And they were about this wide. And if you weren't careful you got one and it conked you on your head. [Laughs] But it was so cool. That was the west, west side, southwest corner of the house and it was very cool and another room that was off of the kitchen was called the dark room. And it was where they hung hams I guess, and meats and it was like a insulated, like a refrigerator, ice, like an ice house. And maybe they had ice in there, I don't know, one time. But, that's... huh?

RP: Did you have a basement at all?

PF: Beg your pardon?

RP: Did you have a basement?

PF: No. No basement. They had a cat get under the house one time. Didn't get out. [Laughs]

RP: I was curious, you mentioned this artesian spring...

PF: A well.

RP: It was a well?

PF: Uh-huh.

RP: And had it been capped?

PF: It had, yes, they capped it. The City (of L.A.) did once they found out that it was there.

RP: So when you moved in it was a capped well.

PF: Yes. I'm sure. I'm sure it was because we weren't allowed to buy it then. We had to rent. So, they must have done that before. And I don't remember, I don't even know where it was. I think it's under the porch. (...) And the backyard, they had, I guess the Watersons or whoever had been there before we moved in, had built a fountain, and had a little wading pool, like a little swimming pool. It's still there but it got plugged up with roots or something or other so that it wouldn't drain. So my dad filled it in with sand and we used it as a sandbox, cats used it as a sandbox. And then he (...) put some more dirt on top and he had daylilies in it.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.