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MR: In those days can you talk about modern conveniences or lack of?

YH: Lack of... we didn't have, well, there were no refrigerators I don't think when I was growing up. It was an ice box. [Coughs] Excuse me. Ice box, you'd have a card, and you put it in your window, and the ice man would go by, look who had the cards, and how many pounds they want, so you'd put a twenty-five or a fifty sign up, whichever one you wanted for the day. And then he'd come and put it in your ice box, and then you'd pay him. And that went until refrigerators came in, but we were a long ways from getting a refrigerator even then, because they were a little bit spendy for us. And so we still had the ice box, and then they quit delivering so we didn't use it very much. And buying food for the day or having vegetables and keeping it as cool as you could. You could walk to the grocery store, it's only a block away, two blocks, and carry what groceries you had. We never bought like a week at a time in those days. I think it's because of the cashflow. So that was about it that we did those things.

MR: If it wasn't too hot, how long do you think a block of ice would last?

YH: I think it's... I don't think it lasts more than three days. I mean, I don't know, a week. It's supposed to last a week. When he comes, it'd be a small little chunk in there. Of course, it'd melt down, so you have to empty the water down below, but I don't recall how often he came. We couldn't make jell-o either, because it wasn't cold enough, the jell-o. The only time we could have jell-o was when it was in the winter or there's snow or it's freezing out, and we could hurry up and make it, and we set it out on the front porch, and then we'd have jell-o, so sort of a treat. And that was really something, people probably thought, "Oh my gosh, what are they doing?" But for us, that was a treat.

MR: Did anybody else make deliveries in the neighborhood?

YK: The milk man came... he came from Redland Dairy, which is, I know it's out Mulino way now, and I see a Redland Avenue and I thought, "I'll be that's where the dairy farm was. And nicest, I don't know if he was Swedish or Norwegian, but a tall man, he'd come and deliver our milk, set it on the porch so we'd have to get it on the hot days before it got hot, bring it in the house. And we had it up until about '60... Alpenrose, when we moved, we had Alpenrose delivering milk for us when the kids were small. And then we moved here and we quit. I don't think they deliver it anymore. Well, they wouldn't come here. [Laughs]

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.