<Begin Segment 7>

AC: No, it's... so you never went, so when you're growing up in Carver, you always had food on the table and you had an outhouse in the back, and life was actually pretty good then.

JS: Well, I wouldn't say it was good. Because you never had to go put a piece of cardboard in the bottom of your shoes before you get your soles, shoes resoled. 'Cause most of us out in the country had an outfit -- you could buy 'em from Sears-Roebuck or something -- and all, a little hammer and tacks and everything and have sole, I used to have soled shoes. But some people, well, in fact, my wife never did go barefooted. That's what she said. But going barefoot was a part of life for us, and we, this was, we could walk on a lot of different kinds of rocks and soils, and freshly mowed alfalfa and dried stubs of alfalfa patch, we could walk across it barefooted. Sometimes we had, when I was a kid and I'd, my dad'd be called to town -- one of his friends died or had some, somebody had an emergency, my dad being who he was, he had to help people sometimes. I can remember when he left me with a team of horses to finish plowing or something when I was, that was before I was even a teenager, I can remember unharnessing the horses myself and feeding them. And my dad came home, I told him what I'd done, he was really pleased with me. I used to walk around, we used to walk around horse manure with our bare feet; it was part of life. All you had to do was wash your feet before you come in the house. [Laughs] But we were, I think, I guess we were... in those days, amongst the people I knew, nobody really went hungry, like they claim to go hungry now, with all the food and overproduction we have in this nation and people still claim to go hungry. Well, maybe it's because they live in the city and they don't have access; nobody'll give 'em food because a produce merchant can't go 'round making a living giving this food away. Then if you can't give spoiled, you don't know whether it's spoiled or not, you can't give that away either because you're gonna get sued if anything goes wrong. That's a difference in our society today. But in those days people... for instance, single men, called 'em poor boulder bums in those days, they went around and offered to chop wood or do something if they could have something to eat. And I can remember my mother giving people something to eat. I don't know what, they were Caucasians and we ate Japanese food, so I don't know what she gave them. But she could, she'd make sandwiches and things like that. And they did, and they didn't leave until they felt like they'd given you some work in return. Any place you travel around out here in this part of the West, if you were traveling across country and broke down people would feed you, even put you up, and help you get on your way again. Today we're scared to even pick up a hitchhiker or anybody broken down on the highway. We just get on our phone and call 911 or call somebody if we can and get them help. You don't let them in your house because people will, somebody claims to be broken down along the house, along the highway and they come to your house, you let 'em in the house to use your phone and you get robbed. So these kind of situations are a fact of life around here. So this is, this is several, two, at least two generations away, you know? But that's the way it was. And I don't know whether there's much more to add to that part of my life or not. I think you, unless you're curious.

AC: I am curious.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.