<Begin Segment 11>

AC: So what kind of things did you do when you ran around through the woods?

PS: Oh, let's see. Shoot squirrels, that kind of thing. One of the things that was, we used to peel cascara bark, and there was a drugstore in Oregon City that would buy it, and that's how my brother Abe bought his first .22 rifle, he peeled enough cascara bark and sold it to the drugstore, and got enough to buy a .22 rifle. That was a big deal back in those days. Another thing I... some of the friends, brother's friends, they were older than I, but one of them had a ten-gauge shotgun and they were trying to get my brother to shoot it. So he finally says, "Okay, I'll give it a try." And there was a bird sitting on a log, maybe a hundred feet away, they told my brother, "Shoot a that bird over there." And so he finally got it up to his shoulder, fired that thing, and it sounded like a cannon. Missed the bird, it was a sawed-off ten-gauge, and anyway, it was something that everybody just laughed their head off about. But it was one of those things that kids do. We were very careful about handling the gun and that kind of thing. Everybody worries about how to handle a gun nowadays especially. But I think back then all the kids learned their lessons pretty darn early, and learned the dangers of firearms. Because I don't think any of us back then, around there, nobody ever got hurt from shooting a .22 or whatever they were using.

You wonder what I did down there as a kid, well, in the summertime we'd go fishing. The water flow on the Clackamas was controlled up there at Estacada, and so the water flow at our place would change at about, close to lunchtime. And so... I can't remember which way it was, but it increased after lunch. Yeah, it increased after lunch, and so if you went out in the morning you could find these little pools, there might be a fish in one of these little pools, and so that was exciting, to catch a little salmon or something. But then I remember one time, caught one of those, trapped one of those salmon and had a heck of a time trying to get him back to the other side of the river, because the water was raising. But anyway, one of the fun things... it's just one of those things that was a heck of an experience for a kid. You about drown sometimes, but I guess you hope that you... when you look back somewhere along the line, you learned the lesson well enough to keep from drowning. Because I remember once, it was the summertime, and down at the village of Carver, there was a place where people could swim, a dock, and swim in that clear mountain water. I was there one time, and this one fellow had drowned, and they had him on the boat dock there trying to revive him, but I guess they didn't get him revived. But that was a real lesson for me early on in my life, what can happen if you're not thinking. And so I had to run home and tell my parents about it. That's one of those things, as a kid, it sticks in the back of your mind. And most people probably aren't familiar with that particular part of the Clackamas River. But anyway, there's lots of places for kids to have fun and get up on top of the bank, and throw things in the river. And the hazard there is you've got to be careful you don't fall off a bank and into the river. There was always that excitement of throwing things, and you always had to be careful that you didn't throw yourself over the bank. But that's the fun kind of things kids did. You're testing yourself all the time growing up.

AC: You had mentioned that your brother had gathered, what kind of bark was it?

PS: Cascara.

AC: Cascara. What was it used for?

PS: I don't know. We gathered the bark, and the drugstores used it for... hmm, you know, I don't know. But it was an accepted thing back in those days. I don't even remember how much they paid for it. But that was one of the things that was available to kids at that time. It was always a kind of a fun thing to go out in the summer and spring to gather that, peel that bark.

AC: How would you gather it?

PS: You find the particular variety of tree, I don't even know what kind of a tree it was now, but it had to be a certain kind. But anyway, took a knife, and you peel the bark off and put it in a bag and let it dry for a while, and take it into the drugstore. I was still probably... I didn't know enough about what went on then, so I couldn't tell you, I can't tell you very much about it, except that the profit went into buying 'em a .22 rifle, one of those big deals.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.