<Begin Segment 10>

AC: You grew up in Carver. Tell me a little bit more. You said it was a great place to be a kid, where did you go to school?

PS: Well, they had a little grade school there, two-room school, two teachers. I think it was two teachers, maybe it was one teacher back when I first started the first grade. Boy, I think it was a two-teacher school, I'm not sure now. But it was, you know, I really can't remember too much about it now, but they built a new school since then, and the area has changed considerably. I remember participating in a Christmas program, I must have been a first grader or second grader. But I had a part singing a Christmas song. I started out all right, but then some kid yelled or cried in the back, and that ended that. I couldn't sing anymore. [Laughs] But anyway, just a little grade school, and we were probably, oh, fifteen miles from Oregon City, that's where brother Abe had gone to high school, and brother Joe, he was the oldest son, so he had to help market this, the wet market in Portland. That was about the way it was. Nice little grade school.

AC: What kind of crops did your farm, did you raise on your farm in Carver?

PS: Oh, folks grew vegetables. Let's see, peas, carrots, bunching carrots, washing and bunching carrots, parsnips. Gosh, I don't know. I can't remember the other things. Let's see, must have had some lettuce, spinach, and maybe some cabbage, too. I can't remember. I remember the peas because we had to string them, set out the poles and string them up. I think we had some berries, too, some currants, that's about all I can remember of those.

AC: So was it the expectation that all the boys help out in the farm?

PS: Yes, yes. Well, that's the way things were back then. I remember during, well, it was the Depression days back there at Carver, some of the folks come out in the wintertime and help wash up parsnips and that kind of thing. All they wanted was some of the vegetables to eat, and got paid a dollar. That's one of the things I do remember, how tough things were. I remember there was a gas station sign there at Carver, and I remember it, I don't know if my brother challenged it, is my recollection on that, but it was nine cents a gallon. It was so cheap, that's why I think I can still remember it as opposed to our two dollars a gallon nowadays. Of course, you remember some of the pay, a dollar a day or something like that back then, as opposed to wages nowadays in agriculture. That's just the way things were. Everybody was trying to eke out a living and recover from the Depression.

AC: So did you ever have to go and help taking the vegetables to market or anything like that?

PS: No, I didn't. Let's see, I think I just turned twelve when we moved over here. I was more interested in running around up in the hills and getting nettles and poison oak and that kind of thing.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.