Densho Digital Archive - Kena Gimba Interview (denshovh-gkena-01-0011)

<Begin Segment 11>

MH: You wanted to talk about your Caucasian friends.

KG: Yeah. They were the kind where, actually just like one big family. There was one of the girls, she was much older than I was, but she'd come over many times when my mom and dad wouldn't be home at nighttime. She'd babysit with her. She'd sit down and help herself to whatever food we had. And I remember her, I still can't learn to eat that. She'd put cream and sugar on top of hot rice. That's what is it, rice pudding or whatever they call it now. And they were over there, especially Clara, that was her name. And she would watch over us, and we'd go over their house, and we'd, you know.

MH: Did your mom and dad ask her to come over or --

KG: No. They just seemed to know when Mom and Dad weren't going to be home. I mean, I can't remember whether they asked Clara to come over, but she was there always. She was there just like a sister was a great deal of the time, you know. It was, I never thought anything different about it. We just thought it was a natural thing. Of course, the younger kids never came over. Well, they did, but then, Melva did, but the boy, he never came over. But we'd go over to their home, you know, and visit.

MH: And you would sometime have dinner there?

KG: I don't remember having any dinner or anything, but the casual visiting was always, you know. If we were out in the farm out there, I think Mister works, but the mother would come out and talk to us, you know. And of course, Dad was very generous with his vegetables. So they'd come out and they would come home. I'll have to tell you about the turkey, our other neighbor. Like I say, my dad was always the giving kind. For one Thanksgiving, I don't remember the full particulars, but I do remember part of it that they brought over a turkey for my family and very unusual. They brought it home. I don't remember the full preparation of this thing, but the story is that my father had this real good friend in town who had a restaurant and he asked him if it was okay if he brought this turkey over, and he would cook it for us. And being a very generous gentleman that Mister, what was his name, Manaze, I think. Not Manaze, it was something like that. Anyway, he says, oh yeah, he'll fix it for him, no problem. So the part I don't remember was although the story is that my dad had put the turkey in the gunnysack and taken it over to his friend there that had the restaurant, Dad didn't tell him nothing, just here's the turkey. Well, afterwards, it had turned out that the turkey was still alive and very much alive. And we'll never live it down because this man used to tell Dad, he says, "It's a good thing that I opened that before I opened up his restaurant or it would have been havoc." That is the story of my dad that did that. Maybe the story part was so interesting, I don't remember having a turkey.

MH: You don't remember having the turkey?

KG: But we must have because, you know. [Laughs]

MH: So you talked about your dad as being very generous, what do you mean by that?

KG: By that, I could almost say he'd give you the shirt off of his back. I mean, he was, we were not a rich family by a long shot. Everything we grew on our farm is, that was what we had. Of course, we had meat, but everything wasn't prepared. Everything was out of our yard. But whatever he had, here, here's this. He was just a giving star. He didn't care. It was, you know, make them happy. That's the kind of person he was.

MH: How about your mother?

KG: I don't remember too much about my mother. She was the one that wielded the... but that didn't make any difference to Dad. They got along real good. I think she would have been the same way, but she had a husband that was outgoing enough. She didn't have to be I guess, I don't know.