<Begin Segment 9>

AC: You had mentioned that your father had a couple jugs of sake sometimes under the vegetables. Did you brew your own sake?

JS: Well yes, I'm sure he did. I used to see some copper tubing and things like that, paraphernalia set up in the upstairs of our house. And sometimes, I don't know, we lived in, when I was child we lived in several different places, but the longest period of time we spent was out at Carver. But I never did, I don't recall some of the things that happened, or I didn't see them. But some of the neighbors talked about my dad gettin' picked up, but I don't recall he ever had to spend time in jail. Maybe he had to pay some fines. There are kind of funny things that happened to our parents when they, especially, they'd get together -- and my folks were involved in quite a few social things -- they'd, it was kind of strange to watch the old men get drunk and act up. But as far as I know, it wasn't, maybe it wasn't as common as the, common as things that went on in this nation back in the East and Southeast, 'cause I've traveled quite a bit in the Southeast and read about the, all the hillbillies and how the hotrod, hotrodding cars started. Those were people outrunning the revenuers, and those were facts of life back there. Apparently there was a certain amount of still going on, 'cause as you travel in the hills of Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, West Virginia, you go through these series of mountains all the time, and every time you go over a hill and down into another valley you can just picture, before transportation became modern, and you read about the people that had to go by horseback or something, back into some of these communities, and you weren't welcome to stay after the sun went down. Why it was so: because every one of those little valleys over there contained a community of people, and whether it had a lot, quite a few people or just one or two families, it was a community. And they were pretty much protected, protective of their own group, and they didn't want to see any strangers after sundown. And because the things they did... making booze was one of 'em, that everybody did. I mean, that probably provided more income for some of those people than any other thing they did. So looking out for revenuers and all this was part of their lives. Although I have never seen a whiskey plant or a still, I'm sure that, in my own mind I'm sure this is the way it was, because they don't make any secrets about it. And when my wife and I have traveled in the South, even in this day, when people will tell you, "Now, you want to be careful when you cross into Alabama because if you're picked up there the police will... cop and jury and everything else." This probably is disappearing, but it could still be factual, once you get off the freeway in those states. And so... probably this has nothing to do with what my dad's experience was, but it was quite common. And the best, what you always would hope for, I would think, with the, those guys makin' their own didn't drink too much of their own before it was ready and then they'd have stomach troubles. Green sake or something, just like drinkin' too much green beer, I suppose. That was... I guess you could put it this way, that he tried everything he could make a dollar at.

So in growing vegetables, he tried something new once in a while. For instance, he was, we had great parsnips. We used to grow parsnips for quite a few years, and I guess he grew more parsnips than most people around there at that time in the early '30s, parsnips were just becoming a popular food. And it'd be, people used to eat things like Brussels sprouts; you don't hardly find people eating Brussels sprouts today, but around the Gresham area, Troutdale, in there, they used to grow lots of, people used to grow lots of Brussels sprouts. But my dad grew parsnips and he did well at it. Parsnips, gobo, those were some of the things he did well at. But other things, growing celery and lettuce and cauliflower, and we grew some berries. I remember we were even starting a currant patch the time we left there. We hadn't harvested any commercially yet, but... so that was, that was about the whole picture as far as I'm concerned, in those days.

AC: Well, you mentioned something that you'd, when you had gone to the farmers' market, you said you were brash, you were, tried, a little smarter than you thought you were. What kinds of stuff were you trying, did you try to do when you were, what kind of deals were you trying to cut with these buyers?

JS: I don't even like to talk about it. Because if I'd have had a handful of cash in my pocket I would've been alright, but I'm trying to, I'm just a kid with just a few bucks in my pocket. And I didn't get in any trouble, but I did some things that some people didn't approve of too highly. It wasn't crooked, it just was bad, bad, dumb things. So I don't, I don't even talk about those to my wife, so I don't want to discuss 'em here either. [Laughs]

AC: [Laughs] It's okay, I was just curious.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.