<Begin Segment 12>

RP: Clyde, can you give us a little picture of some of the activities or changes that took place in Big Pine during the war? Some of the activities, rationing, collecting paper, scrap metal... Were you involved in any activities like that?

CT: I don't think there was any of that there.

RP: Selling war bonds?

CT: Oh, the war bonds. And, yes, that was constant, with no big sales pitch. Just a, you bought it, you had money and you bought one, you bought one. I still got one my dad had bought. He, some reason he... he wasn't a drinking man but they had a, the, you put your name in a bucket and then they pick it out of a box and you pick it out and whoseever name they pick out won the war bond. So he won one, an eighteen dollar one. And he gave it to me. And I still have that. Nineteen forty... whatever it was. I still got it in the kitchen.

RP: Your dad eventually got on with the city of Los Angeles?

CT: Yes.

RP: And what did he do for them?

CT: Just the power and light, water, power, and light. He was a, sort of a handy, you know, I don't know just exactly what he'd done. They had lots of openings for... people ran their generators and did all kinds of that... maintenance. Just an all, just a general hand I'd say. And he was fifty some years old when he got, when he got hired there. And he retired from that.

RP: Was he involved in any mining activity around here?

CT: Yes he was.

RP: What did he do?

CT: Well, to begin, when we first moved there he got a job in... what was that canyon I mentioned?

RP: Shannon Canyon?

CT: Shannon Canyon, that mine...

RP: Tungsten?

CT: Tungsten mine. He got a job in the mill there. They were, the mining was pretty much done during the daytime when I had... and then they'd mill it the rest of the night I guess. I don't know. Maybe the mill was going constant, I don't know. But he worked in the mill for quite a while. And then it shut down. Here's a sign of illegal hunting while I was there. He and another guy, don't tell the forest ranger, no. [Laughs] He and another guy were out on, by the mill, and I'd go up with him sometimes, just horse around. And this other guy had a thirty-thirty. And he had three shells and he said, "I've only got three shells." And they'd go up Shannon Canyon and get us, it was sort of, it wasn't winter time, pretty close. And he said, "Shoot a, get us a deer if you can." And they would eat it. But they said, "Don't pick on a big one." Well, I got there about halfway up before the springs, you know in the springs way up there? About halfway up there. And this great big old buck started down the hill and I couldn't help but start shooting. First shot I missed. Second shot I missed. Third shot I went through his front leg. And he could still hobble and he went right down to the creek in the brushiest son of a gun place you could ever think of. And what was I gonna do? I didn't have no more shells and every time I get just, at first I was just gonna take my knife and go cut his throat. But I'd get close, first time I got close, he jumped at me. And that's... so how am I gonna do? So finally I took my knife, cut a great big long little stick, took my shoestring out, tied the knife to the little stick and finally after a bunch of jabs I jabbed him in the neck and killed him. But after I had thrown about a ton of rocks at his horn and broke him all up.

RP: Quite a battle.

CT: And then they'd come up and hauled him back down. And they were mad at me 'cause it was such a big deer they didn't even want to carry him out of there. That's Shannon Creek isn't it? There's some doves up there hollerin' out all the time way up on top.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.